


trust me to take you home

by Gruoch



Series: the great frontier [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of tragedy, Complicated Relationships, Estrangement, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, In Media Res, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Minor Character Death, Resentment, comics canon but make it MCU, coverups, enemies w benefits to friends, family bonds, jk theres a little comfort, ruthlessly protective Tony Stark, then ignore both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gruoch/pseuds/Gruoch
Summary: It had been a joke between them, once.“Mr. Stark, I need your help,” Peter would admit after one of his many screw ups, and every time Tony would immediately quip, “Where’s the body? I’ll get the shovel.”It makes Peter want to throw up, thinking about that now.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: the great frontier [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2007652
Comments: 281
Kudos: 420
Collections: god tier spider-man fics





	1. putting the dog to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> A huge s/o to blondsak and seekrest for all your support and encouragement and handholding during my periods of crushing self-doubt. I love y'all so much, I killed someone for you XD Thanks for keeping my inner angst gremlin well-fed on a steady diet of tears, you guys are real pals <3
> 
> This is a sorta-sequel to [the tallest man, the broadest shoulders](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21161303) in the sense that it takes place in the same "universe," but you probably don't need to read that first to enjoy this one (unless you'd like to, of course ;) )
> 
> **!!A GREAT BIG WARNING!!** for canon typical violence, non-graphic discussions of suicide, brief alcohol/drug use, and instances of self-harm. This one's heavy on angst, light on comedy. Stay safe, friends <3

Peter spends the first day of summer in Zuccotti Park, which would be nice except instead of enjoying the sunny weather, he’s dodging blasts from alien-tech photon cannons being fired by hordes of drones unleashed by a disgruntled former Goldman Sachs worker attempting to demolish large swathes of the Financial District.

“You know what the worst part of this is, aside from the sweaty summer chafing?” Peter asks Ben Grimm conversationally while he webs a trio of drones to a tree. “I think I probably agree with a lot of this guy’s philosophy—except for, you know, the whole using illegal weapons and endangering unarmed civilians thing.”

“Kid, can you just shut the hell up and do your damn job for once? Every time you show up I gotta listen to you run your mouth,” Ben grunts at him as he rips a self-driving armored vehicle in half. He jabs a stony finger at Johnny Storm, zipping low overhead and melting the tires off another armored truck. “I already have to endure one loudmouth dumbass. I don’t need another one yammering in my ear while I’m trying to work.”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t love me. Even Spidey loves me, and he’s an antisocial weirdo,” Johnny says with a cheeky grin, swooping down to aggressively goose Peter while he’s distracted by another drone.

“Screw you, Johnny,” Peter says, scowling at him.

“Name the time and the place, and I’ll be there, babe,” Johnny says with a wink before zooming off again with a gust of hot air.

Peter grits his teeth, irritated. “Anyway—I’m just saying, maybe this guy has a point. Maybe we _should_ overthrow our capitalist overlords. Maybe we _should_ eat the rich, or at least reduce them to their subatomic particles using high-energy beams of photon radiation,” he continues, punching through the hood of another armored vehicle and ripping the engine out.

“I’m gonna reduce you to your subatomic particles if you don’t shut your mouth,” Ben growls, stomping away and leaving Peter to deal with his corner of the park alone, which suits Peter just fine.

“So when are you gonna officially join the team?” Johnny asks Peter later, when the last drone has been destroyed. “Seriously—Reed would snatch you up in a heartbeat. You gotta admit we work well together. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the whole lone wolf masked vigilante thing is badass, but it’s got to get lonely sometimes.”

“I’d rather deepthroat a cactus than have to spend time with you on a daily basis,” Peter says curtly, replacing his empty web fluid cartridges. Now that the fighting’s done and the adrenaline has worn off, he wants to get away so badly it makes his skin crawl—away from Johnny’s obnoxious grinning face, away from Ben’s grumbling and Reed’s questions, and especially away from tough, sweet Sue, who always tries to hug Peter and invite him to dinner, like she knows he’s starved for both.

“You are the most hostile person I ever met. Like _damn_ —who hurt you, bro?” Johnny asks, still smiling, unfazed as always by Peter’s attempts to shut him down. “I’m just trying to set you up with a sweet superhero gig. You’d get access to all kinds of cool tech, plus free room and board at the Baxter Building, great insurance— _and_ we get to go to space.”

“I’ve been to space. Didn’t like it,” Peter replies. “No place like home, you know?”

“Maybe,” Johnny says with a shrug, leaning over to fix his hair in the reflection of a car’s shattered side mirror. “Guess I’m still waiting for this place to feel like home.”

He straightens up, looking back at Peter. “Come get drinks with us, at least.”

“Next time,” Peter says as he turns to leave. They both know it’s a lie.

***

He swings a few blocks away, gliding silently over the heads of the pedestrians below, who scurry along the sidewalk with their heads bent over their phones, earbuds in place, oblivious to the life-and-death action that had just unfolded around the corner, or maybe just too jaded by the constant onslaught of daily miseries to care. Peter feels a rueful sort of affection for his fellow New Yorkers then, for how easy they make it to disappear.

 _“You have a voicemail from your former employer, Peter,”_ Karen tells him. _“Shall I play it for you?”_

Peter frowns. “Former?”

_“According to the voicemail he left, you have been terminated from your job for failing to show up to your shift this afternoon. He does not sound amenable to rethinking his decision.”_

Peter grimaces, sighing. “Great. Scratch another one, K. Start searching the job sites for me, would you? The usual criteria.”

_“Of course, Peter."_

He drops down onto the sidewalk and makes a stop at a corner bodega. The burly guy manning the counter greets him with a nod, which Peter returns with a little wave as he heads to the back of the store. He grabs a bottle of water and returns to the front, setting the bottle down on the counter and digging around in his backpack for a few crumpled bills.

The bodega guy waves the money off. “For you? It’s free, always free.”

“Aw, thanks, man,” Peter says, opening the bottle and rolling his mask up to his nose so he can take a swig of the water. “It’s hot as hell out there.”

Peter takes another swig, taking his time so he can enjoy the air conditioning inside the bodega for a minute longer before he heads out into the oppressive heat once more. He takes one more long gulp and then rolls his mask back down, slinging his backpack over his shoulders as he gets ready to leave, but then he pauses, looking at the boxy little TV playing on a cluttered shelf behind the counter.

Tony is on the screen, speaking at a press conference at the Avengers facility. His hair is grayer than it was the last time Peter saw him four months ago, nearly completely silver at the temples. The professional TV makeup doesn’t quite hide the puffiness under his eyes that suggests he hasn’t had many good nights of sleep in a while.

_Good,_ Peter thinks bitterly, haunted by the same ghost.

Tony’s all smiles on the screen, though—clapping as he introduces the newest official member of the Avengers team. Kate Bishop is two years younger than Peter but like him had been recruited straight out of high school, Tony and the rest of the spooks at SHIELD apparently not having learned their lesson about enlisting children to fight their battles. Peter had worked with her once or twice while she was still in training, and they’d gotten along well. He’d found her brash and funny and scrappy, and so hungry to prove herself to her heroes. Peter wonders how long it will take before that glamor wears off. How much it will hurt.

“Christ, she could be my granddaughter. Are the Avengers recruiting at junior highs these days?” the bodega guy says, scowling at the TV as he crosses his arms over his chest. “They can’t find a grown ass adult with superpowers?”

“She doesn’t have superpowers. She’s just… _really_ good at what she does.”

The bodega guy grunts. “Well. I don’t know nothing about that, but I always liked the Avengers. Everybody’s drooling over those bozos at the Baxter Building these days, like they can’t remember who brought everybody back six years ago. Sure as shit wasn’t the Fantastic Four—you know what I call ‘em? The K-Mart Avengers.”

Peter shrugs. “They’re alright.”

The bodega guy waves a hand, scrunching up one side of his face. “Eh, too gimmicky, with the matchy-matchy uniforms. Nah. Captain America, Iron Man—now those were _real_ heroes.”

He looks over at Peter, bushy eyebrows raised. “Aren’t you an Avenger?”

“I was,” Peter replies. “Not anymore.”

“Why’s that? You got tired of collecting that sweet Stark paycheck?”

Peter shrugs again. “Thought I could do more here at home. Help the people I grew up with. Be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, you know?”

“Yeah, I get you.” The guy pulls a candy bar out from under the counter and hands it to Peter. “Stay safe out there. I don’t care what those nut jobs on TV say, kid—you’re one of the good ones, too.”

_No, I’m not._

“Thanks,” Peter says, taking the candy and the water and leaving.

***

He swings around the city for hours after nightfall, aimlessly.

He releases the web at the apex of each swing, letting himself drop through the air, just for the little thrill of the free fall, that brief, swooping weightlessness, catching himself at the last possible moment with another web. Over and over, almost lazily, while the buildings pass by in a blur.

He’s in a quiet neighborhood, thinking about heading back to his apartment, catching up on a little sleep. It’s been raining lightly for a while now, one of those steamy summer showers, and between the crap weather and the late hour the streets are mostly deserted. Safe.

Peter sails upwards in a smooth arc, letting go of the web again at the crest. He glances down at the street below as he falls headfirst through thin air, wind whistling in his ears. The rain has slicked the road, turned the black asphalt inky and reflective, like water almost, and suddenly Peter isn’t looking at a road in a Brooklyn neighborhood anymore but at a river, black and gleaming under the spotlights beamed down from the SHIELD choppers hovering overhead.

Peter freezes, his mind going blank and white.

_“Peter!”_ Karen warns him, flashing lights in the lenses in front of his eyes, and it startles him back into the present moment right as the asphalt of the road seems to lunge up to meet him.

He puts his arms out on instinct to break his fall, giving a shout as he feels something snap in his left forearm as his palms connect with the wet asphalt. The inertia carries him head over heels, rolling him along the road until he slams up against a parked car.

He lies there in a heap, panting and cradling his throbbing arm against his chest.

After a moment, he recovers enough to sit up on his knees. He holds his arm out and examines it under the sickly yellow streetlights, sucking a sharp pained breath in through his teeth as he probes it with his fingers.

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. “Karen? What’s the diagnosis, doc?”

_“You have a non-displaced fracture of the radial head.”_

Peter blows out a breath. “Great.”

He sits there for another moment, grinding his teeth with indecision. He’d landed funny and broken his ankle a few weeks ago and had clumsily tried to take care of it himself, and the joint has bothered him ever since, prone to sharp, distracting jolts of pain in the middle of strenuous activity—like dodging bullets or stopping speeding cars.

“Shit,” he says again, with more feeling, before hauling himself to his feet and swinging back up into the air, turning in the direction of Queens.

***

May’s apartment is dark and quiet when he slides open the window she still keeps unlocked for him all these months later. The realization that she hasn’t given up on him returning makes him feel both grateful and like an absolute piece of shit as he climbs through the window into the dark living room.

He creeps down the hall towards her bedroom, listening to the sound of Happy’s snoring getting louder as he approaches. He slips through the doorway and pads over to May’s side of the bed, kneeling down.

“May,” he whispers, touching her shoulder.

She opens her eyes, blinking groggily at him for a moment before lurching uptight.

“Oh! Peter!” she gasps out softly, surprised. She throws her arms around his neck. “Oh, honey, sweetheart...are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” he says, gently extricating himself from her vice-like grasp. “I broke my arm. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” May says, fumbling for her glasses on the side table and sliding her feet into her slippers. “Come and let me take care of it.”

Peter follows her into the kitchen. He stands beside the fridge, leaning his weight from one foot to the other while she digs the first aid kit out from under the sink, feeling a little like an intruder in his own childhood home.

“Take the suit off and sit down,” May tells him when she turns around with the kit in hand, gesturing to the table. “You look as white as a ghost. Does it hurt bad?”

“No,” Peter says, loosening the suit enough to slip his arm out. “Just aches a little. I’ve felt a lot worse.”

He means it to sound like a little joke, but May just purses her lips, reaching over to take his arm and gently examining it.

“Karen says it’s a non-displaced fracture of the radial head, if that helps,” he offers, desperate to get this over with and leave.

May nods. “That’s good—I mean, in the sense that it’s a simple break. I’ll splint it for you. Keep weight off it for a few days, and it should heal up good as new.”

“Thanks, May.”

When she finishes patching him up, he goes to his old bedroom and digs out a pair of jeans and a hoodie from the dresser, changing into them.

May comes and stands in the bedroom doorway as he’s sitting on the edge of the bed struggling to one-handedly put on a beat-up pair of sneakers he found at the back of the closet.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” she asks. “Please, Peter. I’d feel better if I knew you were close by, just for tonight. You could have hit your head or something.”

He knows he should tell her no, but when he looks up at her he can see the glimmer of tears in her eyes in the dim light of his desk lamp, and it crushes him.

“Okay,” he agrees softly. He’s stolen everything from her, destroyed their little family piece by piece. He can give her this one night, at least.

May comes over, presses a lingering kiss into the top of his head.

“I know you’re having a hard time, baby. I know how much she meant to you,” she murmurs against his hair. “I wish you’d come home and let us help.”

“I will. Soon,” Peter tells her. Another lie.

***

He still dreams about Gwen most nights.

Sometimes these dreams are vague, fleeting—fuzzy around the edges, unfocused, like looking at something through a glass lens that’s covered in fingerprint smudges. Other times they play out with a piercing, brutal clarity, every second sharply defined, brittle and crystalline.

The bridge. The black water. The helicopters’ spotlights. The look on Gwen’s face in her final moments of life, her eyes wide and shining with fear. The way she’d called out his name when she’d seen him approaching, relieved, still fully trusting that he was going to save her.

The vacant look in her open eyes when he doesn’t.

Another recurring dream visits him tonight, the one involving his last conversation with Gwen. It unfolds in his mind like a scene in a movie, the setting perfectly staged, the images in high definition, the dialogue crisp and clear.

The little apartment Gwen and MJ have moved into together after graduation. Boxes stacked in the corner of the tiny bedroom, still waiting to be unpacked months later. Peter teasing Gwen about it, while he stands in the doorway to the bedroom and she sits on the end of the bed holding a little compact mirror in one hand and applying mascara with the other.

“I’ve been busy busting my ass at work. These first six months at a new job are important. I want to make a good impression,” Gwen says, running the spool through her lashes. “And I’ve seen your disgusting pigsty of an apartment. You have no room to talk.”

“You’re right,” Peter admits, going over to sit next to her on the bed. He bounces on it a little, so that her hand slips and mascara smudges along her brow bone.

She shoots him a dirty look. “You are such a dick. I could have poked my eye out.”

“Sorry,” Peter says, grinning. “You don’t need that stuff anyway. You have naturally nice eyelashes.”

“Oh, are we handing out unsolicited advice? ‘Cause here’s some for you—don’t tell women what they should or shouldn’t do with their bodies.”

“You’re right. Sorry. I’m a dick.”

Gwen wets the pad of her thumb with her tongue and wipes the smudge away, rolling her eyes. “Don’t forget to pick up the cake for Harry’s party this afternoon. The bakery’s closing at three today, so you _cannot_ be late.”

“Uh, yeah…about the party…something’s come up,” Peter says with a grimace. “Spider-Man stuff. I might be a little late.”

Gwen puts down the compact and shoots him another glare. “ _Peter._ ”

“I know. But we’ve been tracking these guys for months and tonight is our chance to nail them all for good,” Peter says. “I really need you to cover for me.”

“You seriously want me to lie again to poor sweet Harry on his birthday? After all the shit he’s been through with his dad lately, after me and MJ spent weeks planning this party for him, so you can go beat up some crooks?” Gwen says flatly.

“I know, I’m a shit head, but—”

“Yeah, you are,” Gwen interjects. “And you’re making me be a shit head, too. I don’t like lying for you all the time.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Peter says, “but Gwen—this is _really_ important.”

The look Gwen gives him is cutting. “Your friends are important, too, Peter. You seem to forget that sometimes.”

Peter takes a breath, trying to stay patient. “I didn’t say that you’re not. But I don’t have a choice here.”

“You _always_ have a choice,” Gwen says sharply. “You just always choose Spider-Man.”

Peter takes another breath, clenching his jaw. “Okay, okay...forget I asked, alright? I don’t want to argue about this again. Don’t worry about it. I’ll ask MJ—”

“Ugh, don’t ask MJ,” Gwen groans. “That’s why she keeps breaking up with you, you idiot. I can’t handle you moping around for weeks after she rightfully dumps your stupid selfish ass again.”

“Okay, so I’ll ask Ned—”

Gwen rolls her eyes again.“No, stop going to your enabler. God...I’ll do it, alright? But you owe me big.”

“Anything,” Peter promises.

“I want you to invite me to a dinner with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts,” Gwen says immediately. “I found a design flaw with the latest iteration of the tokamak fusion reactor that reduces efficiency by eighteen-percent. If I mention this to my asshole supervisor, he’ll steal my credit. This could be my big break. I want to present my solution to Mr. Stark myself.”

“You want to tell Tony Stark, billionaire genius, inventor of time travel, savior of the universe, that the product he developed is trash to his face?”

Gwen nods. “Yes. I do.”

“Wow, your brilliance and ambition are terrifying. I love it,” Peter says. “He’ll love it, too.”

“I know,” Gwen says, smiling as she leans over to kiss his cheek. Her smile fades as she straightens up, her expression going serious. “I also want you to know that you are _completely_ ruining this party for me. I’m going to worry about you the whole time. Be careful, okay?”

“What do you mean—I’m always careful,” Peter says with a playful smile, standing up.

Gwen isn’t amused. “Seriously. I hate this. I don’t know how MJ handles it.”

“She gets mad instead of scared, and then she channels that rage into crushing her law school exams, so it works out,” Peter says, only half-joking.

Gwen rolls her eyes again, chewing her lip. “Just be careful. I love you, you dope, even though you are the most annoying person on the planet.”

“Love you, too, Gwendy,” Peter says, making a heart shape with his hands as he backs towards the door. He pauses there a moment, offering her a reassuring smile. “It’ll be fine. I’ll see you at the party.”

He doesn’t know it then, but neither of them will make it to the party.

***

He wakes from this dream to the darkness of his old bedroom. He sits up in bed, his broken arm throbbing in time to the rapid drumbeat of his heart, but he feels numb to the pain. The digital clock on his old desk reads three A.M. in glowing red numbers. He’s been asleep for less than two hours, but he feels wide-awake now, agitated.

He strips the splint off his arm and shimmies back into the Spidey suit before quietly opening the bedroom window. The guilt he feels for breaking his promise to May to stay the night is an insignificant thing compared to the guilt he would feel for staying, so he slips through the window and out into the humid pre-dawn gloom without hesitating.

He’s swung a few blocks away when Karen pipes up in his ear.

_“Incoming call from Tony Stark.”_

“Ignore it,” Peter murmurs back, cresting the roof of a building.

There’s a beat, and then Karen replies, _“I’m sorry, Peter, I cannot ignore the call.”_

Peter grits his teeth, barely having time to brace himself before Tony’s voice comes through.

“Hey, kid. You’re up and out early.”

“So are you. What’s the matter, old man—can’t sleep?” Peter asks, a little bit of a sharp edge creeping into his voice.

Tony chooses to ignore it.

“Eh, you know, when you get to be my age you need less sleep,” he says with an artificial breeziness. “But I know you’re busy, so—I’m calling to ask for a favor. We have a new recruit—you remember Katie?”

“I remember that she hates being called Katie. Not that you’ll let that stop you.”

“Well, I need somebody who can show her the ropes,” Tony says, “and I think you’re the best man for the job.”

Peter swings low over a street, startling a group of teenagers clumsily attempting to break into a car. He perches on the arm of a streetlight, watching them frantically scatter.

“I thought she was Clint’s pet project,” he says.

“Clint’s on office duty. Broken knee. He thinks he’ll be back in a few months, but at his age that hope goes beyond cheerful optimism into total delusion. He’s out for at least six months.”

“So assign her to Sam. He’s a good teacher. Patient,” Peter suggests, swinging away again. His broken arm aches under his weight. “Or if you wanna be a sadist and throw her straight into the deep end, hand her off to Barnes—actually, she’d probably get a thrill outta that.”

“I was thinking, temperamentally, that she’d mesh better with you,” Tony says. “Couple of Gen Z-ers—you can annoy each other with your memes and awful nihilism and spare the rest of—”

“Stop.”

Tony actually shuts up, for once.

“I’m not coming back,” Peter continues, stopping once more on the roof of a building and cradling his aching arm against his chest. “SHIELD, the Avengers...I’m done with all that. I don’t want to be a part of it anymore.”

The pause on Tony’s end stretches out a beat longer.

“I’m just asking you to think about it,” Tony says finally, his tone cautious.

“My answer is no.”

“Peter—”

“And stay away from Karen,” Peter says. “I know you’re messing around with her. Stop it.”

“I haven’t done anything to Karen aside from routine maintenance and system upgrades,” Tony says patiently. “And FRIDAY handles all of the integration.”

_Liar. Liar. Liar._

“Well, just stop it, okay?” Peter says, tugging mindlessly at his aching arm. “Leave her alone. I can tell when you’re messing around with her—don’t think I can’t. I don’t want you...spying on me or whatever the fuck you’re doing.”

“Peter, do you hear yourself, kid?” Tony replies in that same measured tone that makes Peter’s teeth hurt from how on edge it puts him. “When was the last time you really got some sleep?”

“Who gives a shit—”

“ _I_ give a shit,” Tony says sharply, the calm facade cracking. Peter can hear him take a deep breath on the other end of the call, and when Tony continues he’s back to sounding collected.

“I really think you should consider coming home, just for a little while,” Tony says. “Just to check in. May would—”

“I have to go,” Peter interrupts.

There’s another brief pause, like Tony’s trying to decide if he should keep pushing or not.

“Alright,” he says finally. “But it’s a standing offer, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter says shortly.

“Okay. Okay. Take care of yourself, kid.”

Peter ends the call without replying back, and then he pulls on his broken arm until he feels sick and the edges of his vision go blurry.

_“Peter,”_ Karen gently interjects.

“Shut up,” Peter says harshly. The A.I. goes quiet, and he steps off the roof, catching himself on a web, skimming over the tops of cars parked along the side of the street below. He swings in a directionless trajectory for a while, until the anger driving the rapid pace of his heart wanes, replaced by an aching shame.

“Karen?” he says quietly.

_“Hello, Peter.”_

“I’m sorry.”

_“That’s alright, Peter. Can I assist you in any way?”_

“Yeah. Yeah—find me some action. Anything.”

_“There’s an armed robbery in progress at the 7-Eleven between Lefferts Boulevard and Eighty-Third Avenue.”_

“That’ll work,” Peter says, twisting in mid-air and swinging towards the location, picking up speed as he goes.


	2. clean up that blood all over your paws

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Tony says, in that first shattered hour following Gwen’s death. “You’re gonna go upstate and lay low at HQ for a while. Let me handle everything here, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter says, still numb with shock. He’s shaking all over, shaking and shaking and shaking. Someone—Sam maybe, or one of the SHIELD agents on the scene—had put a blanket around his shoulders at some point but it doesn’t help with the violent trembling that’s seizing up his whole body.

“Stay off the internet and don’t watch the news, alright?” Tony tells him after he’s tucked Peter into the backseat of the car Happy has driven over.

Peter just nods, barely listening, staring straight ahead at the back of the passenger seat in front of him, clenching his jaw to try and stop it from quivering.

He watches the news anyway. The reporters all follow the same lines they’ve been fed: the body of Gwen Stacy, the daughter of BPD Captain George Stacy and a promising new engineering recruit at Stark Industries, was recovered from the Hudson River early Saturday morning near the George Washington Bridge. Suicide—a bright future tragically cut short. The coverage is interspersed with photos of Gwen smiling in her cap and gown at MIT’s graduation ceremony, another of her beaming while shaking hands with Tony Stark after her senior project was awarded a grant from the September Foundation, and footage of a candlelight vigil being held for her at MIT’s campus.

The Stacy family’s lawyer and a police department spokesperson make the rounds on all the local news networks, requesting privacy during this difficult time and expressing gratitude for the outpouring of love and support being sent to Gwen’s surviving family members.

Tony accompanies them, wearing a somber dark suit, salted beard neatly trimmed, looking both professional and paternal. Trustworthy. He gives variations of the same speech—expressing condolences to the Stacy family and announcing the establishment of a new charity in Gwen’s honor, meant to provide STEM scholarships to girls in marginalized communities around the globe. Pepper joins him later to make a statement acknowledging the possible role the stressful, highly competitive workplace environment at Stark Industries had played in this tragedy, and committing to changing the company’s culture.

There isn’t a single mention of Spider-Man, or SHIELD, or the truth of what really happened that night on the bridge—not then, and not in the handful of days that follow, until the media moves on to the next tragedy and stops talking about Gwen.

Peter watches the news at the facility upstate, and then he puts his arm through the reinforced ballistic glass window in the room.

It doesn’t hurt—that surprises him, because there’s a lot of blood, pouring hot down his arm and streaming in rivulets off his fingers. Alarms go off, and a bunch of armed security guards come into the room with their guns drawn while Peter stands in the corner of the room, blood pooling at his feet.

Tony arrives a short time later, still dressed in the dark suit he’d worn on TV, while a nurse is administering a sedative to Peter after stitching and bandaging his arm.

“I don’t want this,” Peter tells him. He’s shaking all over again, from the drugs or shock or something else.

“It’s just to help you sleep,” Tony replies, sitting in the chair beside the bed and taking Peter’s uninjured hand in his own. “You need to sleep.”

“No...the news...what are you _doing?_ ” Peter asks, his voice breaking. “It didn’t happen like that…she didn’t...that’s not what happened...”

Tony presses his other hand to the top of Peter’s head. “Don’t worry about that right now.”

“What did you tell her father?” Peter demands, tasting bile in the back of his mouth. “Did you tell him she did that to herself? What did you tell him?”

“Go to sleep, kid.”

“Just tell me what you told him. _Please._ Just tell me.”

“Don’t worry about that right now.”

“Don’t do this. Please, Tony...don’t do this,” Peter begs, tears rolling down his temples, limbs weighed down from the sedative.

“Just go to sleep,” Tony gently insists, rubbing his thumb along Peter’s hairline. “We’ll talk about it later.”

They don’t talk about it later. When Peter wakes, Tony is gone, off doing more damage control, and Peter’s voicemail inbox is full of frantic messages from Harry and MJ and Ned. Peter leaves them unanswered. He stays at the Avengers facility for three more days, and then he leaves in the middle of the night without telling anyone.

Tony calls him ten times in the following hour, Sam and Clint and Happy all call ten times more, and each time the call is left to voicemail. Then May starts calling.

Peter sends her a single text.

 _I’m safe. Don’t worry,_ he tells her, never feeling less safe in his life.

***

At its core, it’s a matter of simple physics. A mathematical equation coupled with fragile human biology, all those delicate little bones and bundled nerves in the cervical spine at the total mercy of gravity and inertia, acted upon by an external force.

Peter has moments where he’ll tell himself that she was already dead regardless of his actions that night—her life ended the instant her feet left that bridge. She would have died in the water, likely killed on impact. Bones shattered like porcelain, soft vital organs punctured, ruptured like overripe fruit. The only difference his intervention had made was ensuring that she died a split-second earlier and foot higher than she would have otherwise. In his really desperate moments, he tries to convince himself that it was a mercy, really—quick, clean. Painless. Here one instant and gone in a flash, lights out forever.

In reality, that’s all just as much a lie as the story Tony has crafted for the public.

In reality, she was dead the second she introduced herself to Peter in their freshman chemistry lab, the second she decided to take pity on this lost little kid and befriend him. The second he got sloppy and stupid and selfish, the second Gwen—clever, brilliant, know-it-all Gwen—put all the many obvious clues together and figured out his secret. The second he didn’t pack his bags and go home when she told him she knew, shut her out of his dangerous life forever.

The second he let himself be convinced that he could have this, could let people get close like that, let himself love them and let them love him in return.

It was a matter of simple physics. Except that it wasn’t.

***

Peter breaks things off with MJ immediately following the funeral, before she’s even had a chance to change out of her black dress.

It’s not the first time they’ve broken up—Peter’s romantic relationships follow a similar pattern to his work history: spotty, short-lived, fraught with lies and absences and arguments—but this is probably the most deliberately cruel thing he’s ever done. He needs to twist the knife, though, to really break the ties. Needs her to be angry and hurt and disgusted so that she’ll go home and realize how much better off she is without him in her life.

It doesn’t work, of course, because she’s too smart and knows him too well for that.

“I know what you’re doing, and it’s stupid,” MJ tells him bluntly. Her face is still pale and puffy from crying during the service, but she doesn’t shed any tears now. Just looks at him like she can see right through him, like she could pull him apart at the seams if she wanted to. “You think it’s gonna help, but it’s not. I’m not gonna let you do this to yourself. We’re not gonna let you do this.”

Peter doesn’t intend on giving her or anyone else a choice in that matter. He’s already been methodically planning for this, starting in those days he’d spent hiding away at the Avengers facility.

He sees his mistakes very clearly now, sees the pattern that has emerged—first Ben, and now Gwen. Anyone could be next—May. MJ. Ned. Harry. They’re always going to be his weak point, his Achilles’ heel, the soft, vulnerable underbelly where his many enemies could slip in the mortal wound. He realizes what he has to do in that first terrible hour after everything fell apart at the bridge.

He clears out the contact list on his phone first, going through the names one-by-one. He keeps only Tony’s and Happy’s numbers as an absolute last resort lifeline. He deletes all his emails and all his texts logs, all the stupid, inane jokes and memes he’d passed back and forth with his friends, all the petty arguments, all the _I love you’s_ and _see you later’s._

When he reaches Gwen’s information, he falters, thumb hovering over the delete button and his vision blurry with tears. He ends up leaving it undeleted.

He clears his bank account out next, using half of his meager savings to break his current lease and the other half to put down a deposit on a shitty little illegally subdivided apartment in a bad neighborhood on the other side of town, the only place he can afford without a roommate. He quits his current full-time job and gets another, and then a couple of part-time gigs on top of that.

He deletes all social media and email accounts next—anything that exposes any of his contact information or gives a window into his life.

Tony and Happy and May start calling him again after that, multiple times a day. MJ and Ned and Harry leave Peter hundreds of text messages. Peter ignores the calls and deletes the messages, until he puts the Spidey suit on again for the first time in weeks. Tony forces a call through Karen the second Peter puts the mask on, like he’s been waiting for this moment.

“Peter, are you alright? What’s going on?” Tony asks, and Peter is a little taken aback by how scared Tony sounds, even just with those few words. Peter had thought he’d been thinking perfectly clearly when he’d started going through his list, but now in hindsight he can understand how it might look to everyone on the outside.

“I’m fine,” Peter tells him. “Really. Don’t worry. I just need to be alone for a bit. Take a break. I’m not gonna do anything stupid, I promise. I just want to be alone for a little while, that’s all.”

There is a brief silence on the call, and Peter can tell Tony wants to say a hundred things in that space.

“Alright,” Tony says instead, reluctantly. “We’re here if you need us, Pete.”

“I know,” Peter says, ending the call.

It gets very, very quiet for a while, after that.

***

When the quiet finally ends some weeks later, it does so in spectacular, explosive fashion, typical for Peter’s life. One minute he’s eating lukewarm ramen alone in his bare little studio apartment and getting fired from another job for failing to show up too many times, and the next he’s webbing up snarling alien invaders and dismantling spacecraft hovering over the city alongside the biggest celebrity superhero team du jour, dubbed the _Fantastic Four_ by the fawning media.

“So what do I call you?” Johnny Storm asks him the first time they officially meet, in that strange humming calm that follows an intense fight. The street is strewn with rubble and overturned cars and the stinking, smoldering corpses of alien creatures, but Johnny looks like he’s just walked off a glossy magazine photoshoot—immaculate, not a hair out of place, all white teeth and broad shoulders and strong jawline, like some kind of Platonic ideal of a superhero.

Peter immediately despises him.

“Spider-Man,” he curtly replies, inspecting the burns and tears in his suit.

Johnny snorts, leaning against the burned out husk of a car. “I mean, what’s your name, smartass.”

“Spider-Man,” Peter says again, webbing closed the biggest rent in the fabric before the fibers can tear wider. It’s a lot harder to fix damage like this now that he’s not using Tony’s lab equipment.

“Seriously? You’re gonna do the secret identity thing even with me?” Johnny asks. “I mean, isn’t there some kind of superhero bro-code about stuff like that? You know—a deep inherent bond of trust based off of our mutually dangerous lives?”

“No,” Peter says shortly, launching off a web and swinging up into the air.

“Alright, well, see ya next time, Spidey,” Johnny calls after him, undeterred.

***

The problem with self-imposed isolation is that it’s impossible to control the actions of other people.

The first time Peter realizes this complication, he’s fiddling with his phone on one of his rare free mornings, doing some software updates, when he sees that Ned’s and Harry’s and MJ’s contact information has mysteriously been added back to his phone.

“Come on, Ned. Seriously?” he mutters to himself, and even though he’s already disabled any tracking software on his phone, he goes back through and double-checks it all once more, unsurprised when he finds it’s been turned back on. He turns it off again, then he deletes their contact information.

It becomes something of an arms race, after that. Ned’s and Harry’s and MJ’s contact information will resurface. Peter will delete it, bulk up his device’s security. Ned will worm his way back in. Over and over again.

It’s just a minor nuisance until late one night when Peter’s riding a mostly empty subway train home with a couple bags of groceries, and he looks up at one of the interim stops to see that MJ has sat down in the seat across from him.

For a very long, breathless moment they do nothing but stare at each other across the space between them. Peter can tell from her expression—cool, measured, unsurprised—that this isn’t some kind of chance encounter.

He looks at her for a beat longer, his heart hammering in his chest.

“I don’t want to talk,” he tells her finally. “MJ—I just want to be alone right now, alright?”

He sees her jaw tighten, a tiny little fracture in her composure before she raises her chin stubbornly.

“I don’t care,” she says. “This isn’t only about what you want.”

“Please,” Peter starts, but MJ gets out of her seat and takes a step towards him, like she’s going to sit down next to him.

Peter lurches up out of his seat and lunges for the train car’s doors as they’re sliding shut, just barely squeezing through before they close. His grocery bags don’t make it—the doors pinch closed around the plastic handle loops, Peter gripping the handles on one side of the door while his groceries dangle on the other side. He fruitlessly tries to tug the bags through the doors until he’s forced to let them go as the train starts to move.

He ends up walking home, shaken and empty-handed. His phone buzzes in his pocket as he trudges down the sidewalk.

 _I have your groceries,_ MJ’s texted him. _I’m giving you 2 days to pick them up. then im eating them._

It’s the first time they’ve had any sort of communication in three months.

Peter doesn’t have any money in his bank account to buy more groceries, so he just starves for a week until he gets his next paycheck. But he reads her message over and over again in the meantime, desperately hungry for a different kind of sustenance.

***

Peter’s other problem is just as annoyingly persistent, on top of being so unfairly good-looking that it almost hurts a little to look directly at him. Peter splits his time evenly between fantasizing about Johnny Storm like a hormonal teenage girl, and wanting to punch his stupid, perfect teeth straight into the back of his stupid, perfect skull.

Since their initial meeting, Johnny has taken to randomly dive-bombing Peter while Peter is out on patrol, or sometimes surprising Peter by snatching him out of the air mid-web-swing and carrying him, furiously cursing, across the city to dump him somewhere out in the suburbs—once even stranding him all the way out in New Jersey, forcing Peter to hitchhike home on top of a series of semi-trucks and buses.

It’s infuriating and a total waste of his time, and there is a deep, hateful part of Peter that appreciates the attention.

Very early one morning, Peter is perched on a rooftop looking down on a group of rough-looking armed men exchanging money behind a shady auto repair place that doubles as a surprisingly sophisticated chop shop. Peter’s been trailing these guys for a while now, waiting for them to get together with enough evidence on site for the police to really nail them, and it looks like he’s finally got his chance.

“Alright, Karen,” Peter says, as he shoots off a web and steps off the roof to swing down. “Let’s get these—”

The rest of his sentence turns into an undignified screech as something grabs his outstretched wrist and yanks him straight up into the air.

“Yo, Spidey,” Johnny says, grinning ear-to-ear as he looks down at Peter dangling below.

“Johnny, you idiot,” Peter hisses at him, trying to twist himself free. “I’m in the middle of a job. I’ve been on this case for weeks, and you just blew my chance to get those guys.”

Johnny rolls his eyes. “What, stopping car thieves? Real big stakes there.”

“Yeah, well, it is for the people who got their cars stolen,” Peter says, even more annoyed now. “What if someone stole your car?”

Johnny snorts. “Who’d be stupid enough to steal my car?”

“Just put me down,” Peter snaps.

“What’s that?” Johnny says, grin somehow getting even wider. “You want to go higher? Your wish is my command.”

“What? No—no, no, _nooooOOOOoooo!_ ”

Peter’s stomach drops into the soles of his feet as he’s pulled upward, higher and higher and higher, zipping up past the roofs of buildings and the spires of skyscrapers and then beyond in a matter of seconds, the city below rapidly shrinking, until the cars and buses in the streets look first like little wind-up toys, then like minuscule scurrying ants.

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” Peter gasps out, his voice coming out a full octave higher than usual as he looks down at the tiny grey city below, legs pedaling uselessly in the air. He is very deeply regretting at this moment the fact that he never bothered to fold and re-pack his parachute after the last time it deployed. “Put me down! Please, please put me down.”

Johnny looks down at him again, his grin positively wicked.

“You want me to put you down?” he asks, loosening his grip on Peter’s wrist.

“No!” Peter begs, clinging to Johnny’s hand. “Don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go!”

“You’re giving me mixed signals, Spidey,” Johnny says. “Tell me what you want.”

“Please, god—just—go back. This isn’t funny.”

“How about this…you tell me your name—your _real_ name—and I’ll set you down nice and safe,” Johnny offers.

“What? No,” Peter snaps, anger momentarily overriding fear. “Just put me down!”

“Okay, have it your way,” Johnny says with a shrug, releasing Peter’s wrist and letting the flames crawl down his arm.

“Fuck!” Peter yelps as the heat burns his hands and he reflexively lets go, the curse turning into a terrified wail as he finds himself suddenly plummeting towards the city below.

Johnny zips underneath Peter’s flailing body and snatches his wrists again, twisting around in a mid-air roll that has Peter’s stomach lurching back up out of his feet and into his throat.

“Dude, fuck you,” Peter says in a quavering voice once they’re right side up again, while Johnny laughs.

“I’ll give you a second chance,” Johnny replies. “All you gotta do is give me your name.”

“Or what—you’ll _kill_ me?” Peter asks, incredulous. “What happened to superhero bro-code?”

“You said there wasn’t any superhero bro-code, dipshit.”

“Well—well, fuck you, buddy. I don’t want to be your bro, anyway,” Peter says angrily. “So go ahead—drop me.”

“Suit yourself,” Johnny replies, letting go again.

Peter doesn’t make a sound this time. He squeezes his eyes shut and listens to the wind roaring in his ears as he free falls towards the city, every muscle in his body tensed up as he plummets like a rock.

Johnny catches him again, the air leaving Peter’s lungs in a whoosh as his fall is arrested.

Peter doesn’t open his eyes again until he can hear the noises of the city growing louder. The cacophony of blaring car horns and traffic and construction might be the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.

Johnny drops him onto the roof of a high-rise. Peter takes several stumbling, wobbly steps, like a newborn fawn, before collapsing and clinging to the rough cement of the roof, fighting back the urge to kiss the ground. He lies like that for a couple of minutes, panting and waiting for his pounding heart rate to return to something more normal, before rolling over onto his back and glaring at Johnny, who’s perched himself on the roof’s low perimeter wall, looking back at Peter with an odd expression on his face.

“Dude. Would you seriously have died instead of giving up your name?” Johnny asks, sounding somewhere between impressed and disturbed. “That’s fucking hardcore, man. You’re crazy.”

“ _I’m_ crazy?” Peter spits out, still glaring at him. “What is _wrong_ with you? Why are you always bothering me?”

Johnny shrugs, tapping his heels against the wall.

“‘Cause I’m bored and lonely and you’re my only friend here,” he replies matter-of-factly.

“We are _not_ friends,” Peter says sharply. “We are…occasional work associates at best. You don’t know anything about me. And how are you bored? Isn’t there like...some yacht party with millionaires and models you could be at right now?”

Johnny raises an eyebrow, smiling. “A yacht party? I just spent the last seven years transversing the far reaches of the galaxy, bro. That sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry. You’re way more interesting.”

Peter scoffs, sitting up. “Trust me, _bro,_ I am not that interesting.”

“I’ve seen you climb walls and pick up a car like it weighed nothing,” Johnny says. “That’s… _amazing._ ”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Peter says in disbelief. “You can _fly._ Your sister can turn invisible. I am _not_ special. Look, you wanna see something really interesting? Go over to One-Seven-Seven-A Bleecker Street. There’s a dude there who will dazzle your little tiny mind. Go bother him.”

“You mean Dr. Strange?” Johnny blows a wet raspberry. “Yeah, I know him. He comes to the Baxter Building to talk to Reed sometimes. Real self-important prick. No thanks.”

“You are _so_ stupid,” Peter mutters peevishly. “Don’t you get it—I don’t want to be friends with you. I _hate_ you.”

“Nah, you like me. You just don’t know it yet,” Johnny replies lazily, grinning again. He hops down from the wall and walks over to Peter.

“You wanna get a pizza? My treat,” he says, offering Peter a hand.

Peter scowls at him, grinding his teeth together, thinking about the bare cabinets and empty mini fridge at his apartment and weighing it against his loathing at the idea of spending any time in Johnny’s company.

“Fine,” he agrees gruffly, ignoring Johnny’s hand as he gets to his feet on his own.

***

“So...what do you do when you’re not beating the shit out of criminals?” Johnny asks, one elbow resting on the sticky little table they’re sitting at in a shitty pizza joint in Times Square, his chin cupped in his hand as he watches Peter stuff his face with the pizza.

Peter shrugs, ignoring the tourists who are openly gawking and taking photographs of them.

“Stuff,” he answers around a mouthful of pizza.

Johnny snorts. “Fascinating. You got a job? I can’t imagine the masked vigilante thing pays big bucks.”

“Yes,” Peter says.

Johnny looks at him with raised eyebrows, waiting for him to elaborate.

“Oooookay,” Johnny says, when Peter doesn’t. “You got like…hobbies or something?”

“No.”

“Wow, Spidey, sounds like you live a full, rich life. How about friends? A girlfriend?” Johnny asks, pushing the last slice of pizza across the table towards Peter. He waits a beat, then adds, “A boyfriend?”

Peter pauses with the pizza slice halfway to his mouth, frowning. He looks at Johnny, eyes narrowed warily behind the lenses of his mask. “Are you hitting on me right now? After you tried to kill me?”

Johnny rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t _actually_ gonna kill you.” A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. He winks. “Do you want me to hit on you?”

Peter scowls at him. “Not if this tourist shit hole is your idea of a good date. There’s a million fantastic pizza places in New York City, and you bring me here instead.”

Johnny shrugs, grinning. “Sorry. I’m new in town, remember? Maybe you can show me your favorite place next time.”

“I’d rather get fisted by the Hulk,” Peter replies, rolling his mask back down and getting up from the table.

“You’re incredibly charming, you know that?” Johnny says dryly, still grinning. “Just oozing with charisma. No wonder people love you around here.”

“I don’t really give a shit about what you or anyone else thinks of me,” Peter says flatly. “Thanks for the pizza,” he adds a little begrudgingly, before heading towards the exit.

“Sure, man, no problem,” Johnny cheerfully replies, getting up and trailing along behind Peter like an overgrown puppy. Peter can’t decide if he finds that annoying or a little sad.

“You should really swing by and have dinner with us sometime,” Johnny continues as Peter picks his way past disoriented tourists and costumed grifters. “My sister is always asking about you.”

Peter doesn’t answer, distracted by one of the giant digital screens looming overhead on the side of a building. The Daily Bugle’s J. Jonah Jameson’s red, larger-than-life face glowers down from it alongside a Fox News anchor.

 _Breaking News,_ the ticker below them reads. _Spider-Man murdered police captain’s daughter, sources claim. Daily Bugle journalist alleges foul play and government-assisted coverup._

Peter stands rooted in place, spine rigid, staring up at it. There’s a rushing sound in his ears, drowning out the noise of vehicles and pedestrians around him, and he feels hot and cold at the same time.

“Hey,” Johnny says gently, lightly touching Peter’s back and startling him. “That guy’s a nut job. Don’t pay any attention to that bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Peter murmurs numbly, his heart pounding in his chest.

He turns away, pressing a path through the packed crowds of pedestrians, ignoring Johnny calling after him. He darts down a side street and then scrambles up the side of a building to the roof.

 _“Incoming call from Tony Stark,”_ Karen announces.

“Don’t answer it,” Peter pleads.

There’s a brief pause before Karen replies. _“I’m sorry, Peter, I have to accept the call.”_

Peter rips the mask off before Tony can say anything, shaking so hard he can hear his teeth chattering together.


	3. can't keep running out

When he’s calmed down a bit, Peter returns to the little alley across town where he’s stashed his backpack and throws clothes on over his suit. Then he heads over to the liquor store around the corner from his apartment and spends his weekly grocery allowance on two fifths of bottom shelf vodka. He’s discovered that if he consumes both bottles in under ten minutes, he can actually briefly get moderately drunk. He’s thought about trying to chug a few more, see if he can _really_ get fucked up, but the cost holds him back.

“Karen?” he murmurs once the alcohol has taken effect and swaddled everything in a dreamy, bleary haze. He’s back at his apartment now, lying face down in bed with the suit’s mask on.

_“Hello, Peter.”_

“Do you...is there video? From...from that night—at the bridge. The SHIELD raid. Do you remember?”

 _“I’m sorry, Peter,”_ Karen says, so very gently. _“Those particular files have been deleted. I am unable to recover them.”_

Peter huffs out a bitter little laugh. “Of course they have been.”

 _“Would you like to play a game instead?”_ Karen asks cheerfully.

“A game?” Peter asks, frowning. This is new. He knows Tony’s been meddling with the suit again, but he doesn’t have the heart to disable Karen. “Sure, if you want.”

_“Alright. I spy with my little eye something red.”_

Peter looks around the tiny, sparse apartment. Beside the mattress on the floor, there’s nothing in the room except for a cardboard box full of clothes and a battered old desk and chair he’d gotten at a thrift store. A stack of textbooks sits on top of the desk, and the Spidey suit is thrown haphazardly over the spindly chair.

“Uh. Is it the suit?” he asks.

 _“Very good, Peter,”_ Karen chirps.

Peter lets out another little laugh. “This is going to be a really short, easy game.”

 _“It’s your turn,”_ Karen prompts.

“Okay, okay, uhh...I spy with my little eye...something white.”

 _“That would be your reference book, Strategic Applications of Named Reactions in Organic Synthesis,”_ Karen immediately answers, sounding very pleased with herself.

“You nailed it, K,” Peter says, sticking a thumb up in front of the mask’s lenses. “Give me another.”

***

After Jameson’s explosive allegations, there is a swift, unified backlash. The big corporate news channels and websites continue to fall into line with the story they’ve been fed by the local police under SHIELD’s directive. Officials are brought in to debunk the Bugle’s claims. The Stacys’ lawyer makes a public statement decrying the harm these baseless rumors are doing to Gwen’s memory and to her surviving family members. Lawsuits are threatened, apologies are issued, generous donations are made. It goes quiet again.

But a simmering undercurrent of conspiracy theory continues to bubble over on various popular social media sites and smaller, independent news pages and blogs—rumors that the official story is a coverup, that Gwen Stacy’s death didn’t go down the way the media reported it did. Rumors that Spider-Man was on-site. Anonymous commentators on dozens of forums claim that they have photographic proof, only for these comments to be downvoted into oblivion or the accounts mysteriously deplatformed. The rumors never really go away completely, but they don’t ever really get off the ground, either—cut off, buried, stamped out the moment they rear their heads, like some kind of nebulous internet whack-a-mole.

It’s all a little ethically and legally dubious but fairly harmless, until a popular YouTuber who is one of the biggest, loudest proponents of the coverup theory has his home raided by the FBI in the middle of the night and all of his computers seized as part of a criminal investigation. The YouTuber uploads another video claiming that he’s innocent and being unfairly targeted and harassed by the government for trying to spread the truth, before his account and every video, every comment, every blog post he’s ever made is scrubbed clean from the internet, like he never existed.

Peter can see Tony’s invisible hand in all of it, ruthlessly bringing the narrative back in line, sweeping the mess under the rug, and he doesn’t know who he hates more—Tony, or himself.

***

It had been a joke between them, once.

“Mr. Stark, I need your help,” Peter would admit after one of his many screw ups, and every time Tony would immediately quip, “Where’s the body? I’ll get the shovel.”

It makes Peter want to throw up, thinking about that now.

***

Peter eventually loses his job again, fired after missing too many shifts. Some of those absences are due to being Spider-Man but many others are due to just being Peter Parker. He has days now where he wakes up and the world seems like it’s too much to deal with—too big and too loud and utterly meaningless. Some nights he dreams about Gwen. Sometimes she’s alive in these dreams and sometimes she’s dead, but either way when he wakes up he cries until he makes himself sick, the day over before it’s even begun.

He spends a few tight, uneasy weeks working odd jobs here and there, blowing through the wad of emergency cash he keeps tucked under his mattress and avoiding his landlord when the man comes knocking and threatening eviction when the rent’s still unpaid at the end of the month.

He finally gets another job at a critically understaffed clinic so desperate for warm bodies that know their way around a laboratory that they’re willing to ignore all the red flags on his resume—this MIT grad with a degree in chemical engineering and a stellar internship at Stark Industries whose work history is a shoddy mess of low level part-time jobs that only last weeks at a time.

He uses a copy of an old reference letter Tony wrote for him to get a second job as a research assistant at one of the labs inside the Baxter Building. Every now and then Peter will find himself riding in the elevator with Johnny Storm. Peter will sneak glances over at him, but Johnny ignores him entirely, oblivious. It gives Peter a secret, bitter thrill in the pit of his stomach.

He gets accepted to a graduate program at Columbia. He takes on a third job at the university library and massive student loans that he will never be able to pay off even if he lives to be two-hundred-years-old and works up to the very second he dies.

All together, it’s just enough for him to scrape by, to keep existing one day at a time.

***

MJ’s following him again.

He catches sight of her tailing him after leaving class one day. The weather has gotten cold, and she’s wearing an oversized coat with the hood pulled down low over her face, like Peter wouldn’t be able to recognize her just by the way she walks and holds her body, like she doesn’t live under his skin even now, all these many months apart.

He turns down an alleyway, stopping just inside and standing against the wall, waiting. A few beats later, MJ steps around the corner.

Peter grabs her, whirling her around and pressing her back up against the wall.

“You know, you’re really starting to cross the line into psycho-stalker ex-girlfriend territory with this shit. I don’t know how to make this any more clear than I already have,” he says to her in a low, hard voice, “but I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want you in my life anymore. _Stop_ following me.”

She looks back at him, her jaw clenched tight. “No.”

Peter lets out a little sound, like she’s punched him in the stomach.

“Jesus, MJ. _Please,_ ” he begs, eyes full of tears. “Don’t you get it? I’m trying to keep you safe. If something happened to you...I _can’t_...Just stay away. You _have_ to stay away.”

MJ’s eyes are full of tears, too, droplets glittering in her lashes, but her expression is determined, defiant.

“You don’t get to decide if we’re allowed to care about you,” she tells him, lifting her chin stubbornly. “You don’t get to choose that for me. I’m not going away.”

Peter stares at her, breathing hard. Then he sags, leaning forward and pressing his face into the warm curve of her neck. Her arms immediately wrap around his shoulders, squeezing him tight.

“Just come home,” she pleads quietly. “We’re all waiting for you to come home. I’m waiting for you.”

“Don’t,” he whispers brokenly. He pushes away from her, fleeing up the side of the building before she can say anything else.

***

Later, while he’s out patrolling, Johnny Storm appears like some kind of flaming demon straight out of hell and chases Peter across the length of Manhattan and half-a-turn back again, then up the side of a high-rise to the roof where he manages to finally corner Peter.

“You wanna grab another pizza?” Johnny asks. “I’ve done my research this time. No more tourist shit holes, I promise.”

Peter lies sprawled out on the roof, out-of-breath from the chase, limbs like jelly. He props himself up on one elbow and peers up at Johnny standing over him.

“I want to get really fucked up,” Peter tells him.

Johnny blinks at him, eyebrows raised, then he smiles again. “Like chill fucked up? Or dance to shitty Euro garbage techno till you collapse from dehydration fucked up?”

“I don’t care,” Peter says, plopping back down onto the roof and closing his eyes.

“I think I know what you need. Wait here. I’ll be right back,” Johnny says, walking backwards towards the edge of the roof and stepping off, dropping out of sight.

He returns a few minutes later, trailed by a brilliant scarlet ribbon of flame. He lands on the roof and offers Peter another wide grin, along with a six pack of beer and the biggest blunt Peter has ever seen in his life.

“Holy shit, that’s like a baby’s arm,” Peter says.

“Yeah. There’s some perks to those yacht parties with millionaires and models,” Johnny says with an impish wink. He lights the blunt with a little flame produced from the tip of his finger.

“Still prefer hanging out with you, though,” he adds, puffing on the blunt.

“Why?” Peter asks, genuinely curious.

Johnny shrugs, smiling and exhaling a cloud of pungent smoke. “You don’t pretend to like me.”

He hands the blunt over to Peter. Peter takes a drag off it and immediately starts coughing.

“Jesus, that’s strong,” he chokes out, while Johnny laughs.

“You said you wanted to get fucked up,” he reminds Peter, grinning.

They sit side-by-side on the edge of the roof, their legs dangling off the side, sharing the six-pack and passing the blunt back and forth, Peter listening while Johnny yammers on about nothing and watching the little pedestrians scurry around below, oblivious. It occurs to Peter somewhere near the end of the six-pack that this might be the longest time he’s spent in another person’s company, just doing nothing but hanging out together, in over eight months.

When they finish the joint off, Johnny offers him something else, leaning over and boldly pressing a kiss against Peter’s masked mouth, his lips burning hot against Peter’s through the thin material separating them. He does it again when Peter doesn’t pull away, and then it’s like a wire snapping, the pair of them rolling away from the edge of the roof together, tangled up in each other, urgent, scraping their elbows and knees on the rough cement.

“How the fuck do I get this off?” Johnny asks breathlessly, impatiently plucking at Peter’s suit.

Peter sits up a moment, feeling both inside and outside of his body at the same time. He releases the suit, shucks it off in a heap, kicking it off when it tangles around his ankles, goosebumps pebbling his exposed skin in the chill wind whipping across the roof, until Johnny comes close again and warms him with his own radiant body heat, his hands burning like a brand wherever they touch Peter.

When Johnny goes to pull off the mask, Peter grabs his wrists tightly, stopping him.

“Kinky,” Johnny says with another wide, laughing grin, totally unfazed as he tugs Peter closer, gets that hot, obnoxious mouth on him again, sucking scorching welts along Peter’s bare shoulders and leaving him feeling breathless and untethered from the intensity of being touched like that after so many months alone.

“Listen, man—don’t take this the wrong way,” Johnny says afterward, while pulling his uniform back on. “But I’d really appreciate it if we kept this on the DL. I’m not really looking for anything serious, and I’ve got a branded image I’m trying to keep. Most of my fans are straight women. Gotta keep the fantasy alive for them, you know?”

Eight months ago, still tender and naive, Peter would have been a little hurt. He feels nothing now.

“Who would I tell?” he asks, shimmying back into his own suit.

“Right. You got the whole lone wolf secret identity thing going on,” Johnny says in a tone that makes it obvious that he still finds that a little ridiculous and amusing. He looks Peter over for a moment, then asks, “Seriously, though—no one knows? Not even the Avengers?”

“No,” Peter lies. “No one.”

“Doesn’t that like, ever get a little depressing?” Johnny asks, sounding more serious than Peter has ever heard him sound the entire time he’s known him. “Like, sometimes I feel like I’m gonna go crazy, and I’m not even trying to deal with this alone, you know?”

“It’s fine. You just…you get used to it,” Peter says, swallowing down the ache that rises in his chest.

“Okay, well. If you say so,” Johnny says, shrugging. He struts over to Peter with a predatory grin. “You oughta set up an OnlyFans account. _The Spectacular Spider-Man._ You could make bank.”

Peter pushes him away, rolling his eyes behind the lenses of his mask. “God, I seriously can’t stand you.”

“Hard to believe that now,” Johnny says, grinning wider as he walks backwards to the edge of the roof. He points a finger at Peter. “Same time, same place next week?”

Peter startles a little, not expecting this to be anything more than an awkward one-off that they’d never speak of again until their dying days, especially after Johnny’s request for secrecy. He considers the offer for a moment, reluctant, thinking of all the ways this could go very badly wrong.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees anyway.

“Cool. Thanks for the good time. See ya around, Spidey.”

Johnny flashes another grin, blowing a kiss at Peter before stepping backwards off the ledge and zooming away over the city, splitting the purpling evening sky like a spear of white-hot light.

***

_“Incoming call from Tony Stark,”_ Karen intones a few weeks later, while Peter is aimlessly swinging around Midtown, mind fuzzy from fatigue.

“Ignore it,” Peter mutters, skittering up the side of a building.

 _“I’m sorry, Peter,”_ Karen replies regretfully. _“Override executed.”_

“Hey, Pete,” Tony’s voice greets a second later.

Peter comes to a stop on the building’s roof, taking a deep breath before answering. “Hey, boss. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Just checking in. It’s been a while.”

Peter fidgets on his perch, repetitively cracking the knuckles in his left hand. “Well. I’m good. Kinda busy, though.”

“Okay, I know,” Tony says. “But, hey—why don’t you plan on having Thanksgiving with us at the lake house? Happy and May are coming, too.”

“I don’t think—” Peter starts, but Tony cuts him off.

“I already told Morgan you were coming.”

Peter clenches his jaw so tightly it makes his teeth hurt.

“Mr. Stark, I really appreciate the invitation, but I don’t think I can make it,” he says evenly. “I just started a new job, and—”

“Give us three days,” Tony interrupts again. “Please. Come on, kid. What’s three days? We’d all really like to see you. Morgan would really like to see you. She says you’re not answering her texts anymore. You can give her three days, right?”

Peter releases another long, slow breath, guilt and anger twisting a knot in the pit of his stomach.

“Alright,” he agrees. “Three days.”

***

He regrets the commitment almost as soon as he makes it, the remorse worsening the second he steps foot inside Tony’s lake house for the first time in many, many months. He lets May hug and kiss him, and he smiles at Morgan and teases her mercilessly and affectionately, but the atmosphere feels charged and fragile, everyone walking on eggshells, the smiles and laughter and conversation artificially cheerful, and Peter thinks it would have been better for everyone if he’d just stayed away. He diligently avoids being alone with Tony, half out of guilt and half out of fear of saying or doing something he won’t be able to take back.

The stress of it all makes his nights hellish and long. He closes his eyes only to watch Gwen die over and over again behind his eyelids, to hear her calling his name on an endless loop. He wakes to darkness and stillness, his cheeks wet and his heart racing. He’ll get up then and get dressed, and spend the remainder of the night walking laps around the lake in the dark, his breath pouring out in ghostly white clouds in the frosty moonlight and the tips of his fingers numb with cold, until a thin ribbon of peachy pink dawn sunlight creeps over the tops of the trees.

He returns from this walk on the grey dim morning of his promised third day, eager to pack up his backpack and return to the city, only to find Tony sitting alone in the kitchen, as if he’s been waiting there for Peter.

“Hey, kid,” Tony greets him. He nods towards the coffee maker. “I just made coffee. You look like you could use something to warm you up.”

“I’m alright,” Peter says, getting a glass out of the cabinet by the sink and filling it with water instead.

“Yeah? You’re just going for hours-long walks in the middle of the night in late November for the fresh air?” Tony asks mildly.

Peter sets the glass down on the countertop, gripping the edge of the sink and running his tongue across his teeth. He can feel Tony’s eyes on his back.

“Yup, that’s it,” he says shortly.

Tony doesn’t respond for a moment. Peter can hear him tapping his fingers against the edge of his coffee mug.

“You think you can sit down for a minute so we can have a little chat?” Tony asks finally, a forced casualness in his tone.

Peter clenches his teeth until his jaw aches. “About what?”

“I heard you’re going back to school, for one,” Tony says. “What are you studying?”

Peter drinks the entire glass of water before answering. “Chemical engineering. I’m getting my master’s.”

“That’s good.”

Peter gives a little twitching shrug. “It’s just something to do.”

“Well. If you need something to do, you could always come back to the team,” Tony says. “As amusing as it is to watch Katie drive Sam up a wall, we could still really use you. Have you put any more thought into my offer?”

“I said no. I’m not gonna change my mind no matter how many times you pester me about it,” Peter says, refilling his glass. “I liked you a lot better when you were retired.”

Tony gives a little snort. “Yeah...Pepper tells me the same thing.”

An uncomfortable silence follows. Tony’s tapping the coffee mug again, faster, and Peter has to resist the urge to snatch it from him and smash it on the floor.

“Are you still seeing your therapist?” Tony asks finally.

“No,” Peter says, keeping his back turned to him.

“Why not?”

Peter shrugs again. “I can’t afford the copay.”

Tony makes a soft, distressed sound at that. “Peter, buddy—don’t worry about that. You need to go back, okay? I’ll take care of the bills.”

“I don’t want you to take care of it. I don’t want your money. I don’t wanna talk to you about this. I don’t wanna talk to you at all,” Peter says, turning around to face him, breathing hard. “I’m only here for Morgan—because you _lied_ to her. Just like you lied to me, and May, and _every_ fucking person you’ve ever met.”

Tony wets his lips with his tongue. “Peter—“ he starts, but Peter cuts him off.

“You went on national TV, and you _lied,_ ” he says. “Why did you do that? She didn’t deserve that. Her family didn’t deserve that. They shouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives wondering why she did that, when that’s _not even what happened._ They deserve the truth. They deserve _justice._ ”

“They do,” Tony says, nodding. “But I’m trying to protect you.”

“From _what?_ ” Peter snaps. “Reality? Am I supposed to just—pretend I wasn’t there? Just—go on with my life like nothing happened, like I didn’t—”

He chokes on the words, his eyes filling with tears.

“Pete,” Tony says. He’s trying for gentleness, but Peter can hear the pleading edge in his voice. “What happened that night…it wasn’t—”

“Wasn’t what?” Peter interrupts, hearing the sound of blood rushing in his ears. “Wasn’t my fault? Is that what you’re gonna say, huh? You can’t even tell the truth when you’re alone with me?”

Tony looks at him silently for a moment, his hand clenched tight around his coffee mug, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

“It was an accident,” he says at last. “That’s the truth. It was an accident.”

“Stop making excuses. I didn’t ask for this,” Peter says, his voice shaking with a barely contained fury. “I didn’t ask for you to try to—to save me or whatever the fuck you think you’re doing.”

“You didn’t. That’s all on me,” Tony agrees, infuriatingly calm. “You understand why I had to do it, though. The daughter of a police captain dies under violent circumstances…there’s gonna be questions, investigations…I couldn’t promise your identity doesn’t get out. What happens to you then? What happens to the other people you care about? Your aunt and Michelle, your friends...”

Peter says nothing, taking shaky gulps of air, tears running down his cheeks.

“Was it hard?” he asks finally, his voice breaking. “When you looked her father in the eye and lied to his face about what happened to her? When you lied and told him she did that to herself? Was it hard?”

“Yes. I know what it’s like to grieve the loss of a child,” Tony says evenly, looking straight across at Peter. “And no. I’d do a hell of a lot worse to protect the people I care about.”

Peter lets out a convulsive little sob, pressing a hand against his forehead, feeling sick.

“She wouldn’t want you to blame yourself, Peter,” Tony says gently, his expression soft.

Peter jerks back like he’s been slapped.

“She’s _dead!_ ” he spits back. “It doesn’t fucking matter what she would want—she is _dead._ Everything she wanted, everything she worked for—it doesn’t _fucking_ matter anymore.”

“Is everything alright?”

Pepper has appeared in the archway to the kitchen, tying the sash of her robe. She looks between the two of them, a concerned expression on her face. Peter immediately turns away from her, wiping at his face, aching with shame.

“Everything’s fine, honey,” Tony assures her. “You’re on vacation. Go back to bed and sleep in while you can.”

Peter takes several deep breaths, waiting until he hears Pepper heading back up the stairs before he turns back around.

“I’m leaving now,” he says quietly. “I’m going back to the city. I don’t want you to call me anymore. You and me—we’re done.”

“Peter,” Tony says, starting to stand, but Peter slips out of the kitchen and darts up the stairs before he can finish.


	4. put your arm 'round my collarbone

Peter goes back to his apartment and immediately collapses into bed, exhausted and sick with grief, feeling like he’s been roughly hollowed out, all his tender insides scraped raw. He lies belly down, his cheek pressed against the thin mattress, scrolling through the unanswered texts MJ has sent him over the months, reading and re-reading them until he can’t fight sleep off any longer.

He dreams of Gwen, like always, haunted by her spectral presence no matter where he runs.

Gwen walking arm-in-arm with him across the snowy campus on a frigid February morning, her nose and cheeks cherry red and her lips chapped, her blond hair appearing almost white in the frosty winter sunlight. She’s coughing wetly and sniffing up gobs of snot, stricken with the nasty cold that’s spreading like wildfire through the residence halls, and Peter thinks she’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, a snow angel. He tells her as much, and she scoffs and rolls her eyes and wipes her streaming nose on his shoulder.

Gwen sitting on MJ’s lap in a sweaty, packed subway car in the middle of July, sharing earbuds with her and sleepily swaying together to the music. Gwen and Harry building robots in Harry’s dorm room, wires and parts strewn across the floor, bickering good-naturedly. Gwen comforting Peter because MJ’s tired of his bullshit again and broken up with him for the umpteenth time. Gwen crying because Peter’s shown up at her room in the middle of the night bleeding everywhere, and Peter telling dumb jokes to put her at ease while she patches him up, even though he’s shaking from the pain. Gwen hugging him at their graduation, squealing in his ear about the job offer she’s received from Stark Industries, all her hard work paying off. All her dearest-held dreams coming true.

Gwen dancing with MJ and Harry and Ned at some exclusive club in SoHo that Harry’s dragged them to, the music so unbearably loud it makes Peter feel a little nauseated and disoriented, but he doesn’t even care because he’s there with the people he loves best in the whole world, and they’re young and drunk and stupid happy together, and for the moment all their responsibilities are far away. Gwen comes over to him, all smiles and glossy eyes and flushed cheeks, and Peter tells her that she’s beautiful again, and she just laughs this time and pulls him out onto the floor.

Later, she helps him drag a black-out drunk Harry back to Harry’s brownstone, giggling like assholes as they stumble up the stairs at the subway station, the beat of the music still throbbing in their eardrums like a pulse. They lay Harry down on his side on the sofa, and then they curl up together in Harry’s bed, facing each other, nose-to-nose, knees pressed together. Peter tells her she’s pretty again, and this time she kisses him, a little clumsy and shy at first, and then deeper, softer, again and again and again. They wind up having sex, fumbling and sweet and slow.

“That was…interesting,” Gwen observes afterward, thoughtful, her hands folded under her collarbones.

“In my defense, I’m still a little bit drunk,” Peter mumbles sleepily beside her. “Give me like fifteen minutes and I can go another round and make it up to you.”

Gwen snorts, turning her head on the pillow to smile at him. “No, I meant like…I’ve never done that before. I’m not sure what I expected, but…yeah. Interesting.”

Peter is suddenly very awake and very sober. He blinks at her. “You—like— _never_ never? Like—that was—your _first_ time— _ever?_ "

Gwen’s smile turns shy again as she bites her lip, nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

Peter sits up, feeling like he’s just swallowed a rock. “What the hell— _Gwen!_ Why didn’t you tell me?”

Gwen rolls her eyes, shrugging. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s _not_ a big deal. I don’t know why you’re freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Peter insists, clutching the sheet to his chest. “Just—you’re _drunk._ ”

“I’m not drunk,” Gwen replies calmly. “I was fully aware of my decisions. Relax.”

“Okay, but—if I’d known, I would’ve…I dunno—done better,” Peter says helplessly. “I’m man enough to admit that _that_ was not my best performance.”

Gwen rolls her eyes. “It was fine. It was— _fun._ I enjoyed it, honestly. I feel like I made it pretty clear that I did. And it’s not like I have anything to compare it to, so once again you are needlessly freaking out. Your male pride is intact.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I meant like—you’re so…smart and kind and… _perfect._ You deserve better than… _me,_ ” Peter tells her, awash in regret.

“Oh my god,” Gwen groans, smacking his bare arm. “I swear you have a guilt fetish. You get off on this.”

“No, I don’t—”

“Peter,” Gwen says firmly. “I’ve dug bullets out of your body while you bled all over my floor. I’ve jumped off skyscrapers with you. We’ve held each other’s lives in our hands. Don’t tell me we don’t deserve each other. You’re my best friend. I trusted you with this, like I’d trust you with anything—like I trust you with my _life._ I know you’d never hurt me.”

Peter looks at her for a moment, feeling a rush of deepest affection. He lies back down next to her and presses a light kiss under her eye.

“I love you, Gwendy,” he murmurs, smiling. “I love you so much.”

She smiles back at him, her eyes tender.

“Peter…” she says, her voice full of love and trust, reaching out to smooth his hair away from his face.

“Peter…” she says, standing on the bridge over the black water, her eyes wide and shining in the searchlights beamed down from the hovering SHIELD helicopters overhead. Her voice is full of love and trust and relief—like she never doubted that he would come find her, like she never doubted that he would save her, like she never doubted that he would never, _never_ let anyone hurt her.

Her life in his hands…

Gwen hanging above the black water, eyes open and head tilted back. Gwen hanging above the black water, eyes open and head tilted back. Gwen hanging above the black water, eyes open and head tilted back.

Peter jerks awake, rolling over and throwing up on the floor beside the mattress.

***

Hours later, he swings through Hell’s Kitchen, a headache throbbing in between his temples and his knuckles bruised from all the punches he’s thrown at would-be muggers and crooks who’ve had the misfortune of crossing paths with him that day.

“Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can,” Johnny sings out-of-tune, drifting through the air alongside Peter, his flames a brilliant scarlet red against the dreary grey backdrop of the city.

“Go away,” Peter mutters at him, dropping down into an alleyway between buildings.

Johnny ignores him, swooping down to hover near Peter. “Where ya been hiding, Spidey? I haven’t seen you in days. I’ve missed you. I’ve been bored out of mind.”

Peter stalks away. “I don’t care. I don’t want to talk to you.”

Johnny zips around in front of him, grinning. “So grouchy today. What’s got your—”

Peter cuts him off, reaching through the flames and grabbing Johnny by the front of his uniform, ignoring the searing white hot pain engulfing his hands and licking up to his elbows. He spins around and shoves Johnny back against the wall of the building hard enough that the air is audibly punched out of Johnny’s lungs, his flames extinguishing instantaneously.

“I could kill you, and it wouldn’t even be hard,” Peter tells him in a low voice.

“But you won’t,” Johnny says with smile, soft. He leans his head forward and kisses Peter, biting at his bottom lip through the mask.

Peter lets him go.

“You have curly hair,” Johnny observes later, fingering the sweaty strands escaping Peter’s mask at the bare nape of his neck. The air is chilly and the wind brisk up on the roof of the building they’re on, but Johnny radiates heat like a furnace, scorching against Peter’s back.

“You’re like, insanely flexible, too,” Johnny continues. “You ever try to suck your own dick?”

Peter snorts, startled. “Oh my god. Dude— _no._ Never.”

“Why not? I mean, if I had super spider flexibility I’d be sucking that shit _raw_ twenty-four-seven.”

Peter lets out a huff of laughter, an exasperated smile curling his mouth behind the mask. “You’re so stupid and _disgusting._ ”

“I’m kidding—sorta. I mean, I’d at least try it once just to see if I could. You know, for science,” Johnny says. “But really I just said that to make you laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before. Seemed like you needed it.”

Peter rolls over to face him. He traces a line across Johnny’s brow and down his temple with the pad of his burnt finger. Johnny’s eyelashes are long and dark and curly, like Gwen’s.

“I really wish you’d just leave me alone,” Peter murmurs.

Johnny grabs his hand, pressing a kiss to his blistered palm, lips turning up into a sly, impish smile. “Nah, you don’t.”

***

Peter doesn’t sleep that night, the pain from his burnt hands too agonizing to allow him to drift off, despite the exhaustion hanging like a heavy chain around his bones. He feels grateful for it, a reprieve from the far deeper agony of Gwen’s visitations. He spends hours kneeling like a penitent next to the grimy bathtub, his blistered hands submerged in tepid water, charred skin sloughing off in pale ribbons.

By the time sunlight starts to weakly filter through the broken blinds of the bathroom’s tiny window, the blisters have all vanished, leaving behind tender, unmarred skin, shiny and pink and new like it had never been injured. He wishes that every part of him could heal so easily, could slip free of the scars on those deep unseen places and emerge purged and renewed.

***

Peter bundles himself up in his threadbare old coat a little while later that morning and rides the subway into Manhattan, stopping at a busy coffee shop on his way to campus. A four-dollar coffee is a luxury he really can’t afford, but his sleepless night is already starting to catch up to him in the form of a throbbing ache behind his left eye, and he needs the caffeine to make it through class.

He’s near the front of the line, zoning out while he waits for his turn at the counter, when he hears someone calling his name, snapping him back to attention.

“Pete! Hey, Pete!” a familiar voice calls from behind him. “Parker!”

Peter turns around, and his brain immediately short-circuits.

Harry Osborn is waving at him from the back of the line, a huge smile spread across his face, beaming at Peter.

“Holy shit—Peter!” Harry says, starting to push his way forward through the line, oblivious to the disgruntled looks the rest of waiting customers cast his way. He finally reaches Peter and immediately seizes him into a tight hug.

“Oh my god, what the hell?” Harry laughs, squeezing Peter hard one last time before leaning back, still holding Peter by the shoulders. “Dude, where the _fuck_ have you been? I’ve been calling and calling you forever.”

“I changed my number,” Peter mumbles, still stunned.

“I can’t believe this—first time I’ve been back in the city in nearly a year and I run straight into you,” Harry says, squeezing Peter’s shoulders like he doesn’t quite believe he’s really there. “Let me buy you a coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” Peter says immediately.

“You’re in a coffee shop,” Harry points out, smiling wider. “What are you doing here if you don’t drink coffee? Did you switch to tea?”

Peter shakes his head, staring at Harry, drinking him in. Harry looks the same as he did the last time Peter had seen him nearly a year ago, only he’s exchanged the jeans and MIT hoodies for a sleek dark suit and a cashmere overcoat, and he’s combed his hair back from his face instead of letting it fall in careless floppy waves like he had at school.

Harry huffs out a little laugh. “Well. At least let me buy you a muffin or something.”

“I don’t eat muffins,” Peter mumbles. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

Harry laughs again. “God, you’re still so weird. I’m so glad you’re still a fucking weirdo.”

He goes to hug Peter again. Peter makes a little involuntary wounded animal sound, and Harry stops, his expression going from amusement to concern.

“Sorry. I’m late. I gotta…go to class,” Peter tells him, taking a step backwards towards the exit.

Harry grabs his arm. “Okay, hey—let me give you a ride. I got a car waiting outside.”

Peter shakes his head, taking another step back. “No, I don’t want to bother you—”

Harry stops him again. “Peter—I haven’t seen you in almost a year, and you’re just gonna split now?”

Peter hesitates, looking from Harry to the exit and back again. Harry’s expression is pleading, and Peter has never once been able to refuse him anything in the entire time they’ve known each other.

“Okay,” he agrees quietly.

“Okay,” Harry says, smiling again. He loops an arm through Peter’s, like he’s afraid that if he lets go Peter will disappear, and leads him outside to a sleek black limousine waiting at the curb. They climb inside, sitting across from each other.

“Where are you headed?” Harry asks, settling back in the seat.

“Uh. Columbia,” Peter replies, curling and uncurling his hands into fists in his lap.

Harry taps on the privacy glass separating them from the driver, passing this information on. He waits until the glass is rolled back up again before turning to face Peter once more, another smile lighting up his face.

“Jesus, I almost can’t believe you’re sitting here in front of me. I haven’t seen you since…when…the funeral? Eight million people in this city, and I run right into you,” Harry says. “What are the chances?”

“Yeah. Crazy,” Peter agrees, forcing a smile.

Harry smiles back, his expression softening with concern as he looks Peter over. “I gotta be real with you, Pete—you look like a shit.”

Peter lets out a little exhausted laugh. “I know. I, uh…I’m going to grad school. It’s really stressful. Lotta late nights.”

“That’s good, though. Good for you,” Harry says earnestly. “No offense, but I always worried you wouldn’t live up to your potential. It was always my dad’s one gripe about you, too, and I never felt like I could really defend you. So I’m real happy to hear that. You’ve earned that, Pete, you really have.”

“Thanks, Harry.” Peter clears his throat, putting his hands between his knees and squeezing them, uncomfortable with the attention after so many months spent avoiding such scrutiny.

“What about you?” he asks in an effort to divert the conversation away from his personal life. “You said you haven’t been in the city...”

“Yeah, well…long story short—my dad’s decided to get into politics. Running a multi-billion-dollar corporate empire wasn’t stroking his ego enough anymore, I guess. He’s gearing up to run for a Senate seat, so you’re looking at the new CEO of Oscorp,” Harry says with a brittle smile. “Dad shipped me off to rehab, then off to PR boot camp, stuck me in a fancy suit and plastered my face all over a bunch of magazines and TV screens. I’m surprised you’re just now finding out.”

“I’ve...been really busy, and—wow, Harry,” Peter says, blinking at him. “I’d congratulate you, except I feel like you probably hate this.”

Harry shrugs, rolling down the window a bit and producing a cigarette from a sleek silver case.

“It’s all a sham. I just show up and look pretty. Smile for the cameras. My dad’s still holding the reins, really,” he says, lighting up a cigarette and taking a drag off of it. “You know how he is—total control freak. So. It’s all about the optics. He was complaining about the fact that I’m twenty-four, ‘cause it means Tony Stark was younger when he became CEO of Stark Industries. Like that’s my fucking fault or something.”

Harry shrugs again, smiling fondly at Peter. “God, I’ve missed your dumb baby face.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” Peter says, feeling a tight lump form in his throat. “I’ve really missed you, Har.”

Harry’s expression softens again, his eyes full of understanding. He leans forward, squeezing Peter’s knee. “Hey, I’m always here for you, you know that, right? You’re my best pal, Pete. Anything you need, you just ask. I know it’s been a really shitty time for all of us, but I’m here. I’m back, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Peter nods, looking out the car window and blinking rapidly.

Harry squeezes his knee again before sitting back. He takes another drag off the cigarette, flicking the ash out the window.

“I had lunch with MJ and Ned the other day. They say they haven’t seen you, either,” he says carefully. “We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I know. I am,” Peter assures him, sniffing. “I just…I felt like I needed to be alone, you know…just to…to process things or whatever.”

“I get it,” Harry says. “I mean, I kinda ran away there for a while, too, even if it wasn’t entirely willingly. I needed it, though.”

Peter nods, taking a shaky breath.

“She still loves you, you know,” Harry adds gently. “MJ acts tough, but she talks about you all the time. She’s waiting for you, man.” He smiles, winking at Peter. “You go back and make her happy, and I promise to pay for the wedding.”

Peter looks away again, swallowing down the knot in his throat.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” he murmurs.

“Why not? You guys were good together—when you weren’t fucking it up,” Harry says with a playful smile. He takes another puff on the cigarette, his expression going rueful. “Makes me a little jealous, even now. We were never quite right for each other, were we? Not like that. Wonder why.”

“‘Cause of me,” Peter says seriously. “‘Cause I was awful to you.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake...here we go again...god, it must be so _exhausting,_ being you. You always act like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

“It’s true. You were never happy when you were with me. Every time you relapsed was when we were together.”

Harry rolls his eyes again, taking one last drag on the cigarette before tossing it out the window. “Good to know the Parker guilt complex is still going strong. I’ve missed getting to watch you self-flagellate. It’s a little narcissistic, you know, to blame all my many problems on yourself. I did a great job of fucking up my life without your help.”

“Maybe,” Peter murmurs. “But I didn’t help make it better, either.”

“You did,” Harry says sincerely, smiling. “You’re a shit friend a lot of the time, yeah, but when you’re not...there’s no one better in the whole world. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

Peter says nothing to that. There’s a painful tightness in his chest again. He clears his throat and points through the window.

“That’s my building over there,” he says. “You can just drop me off here. Thanks for the ride.”

“Okay. Okay. Sure.” Harry straightens up, tapping on the glass again.

The car pulls over and stops. Peter opens the door and starts to step out, but Harry leans forward and grabs his arm again.

“Hey, come to my place and have a drink tonight,” he says, his expression pleading once more. “Let’s catch up.”

Peter looks at him, chewing the inside of his cheek anxiously before nodding.

“Okay,” Harry says, giving him a relieved smile. “See you later, Pete.”

***

Harry’s brownstone is almost exactly the same now as it was the last time Peter had been here, months and months ago. There are a couple of new paintings hung up on the walls in the living room—investment pieces, Harry explains, painted by a current darling of the art world whose name Peter forgets as soon as Harry mentions it. It’s one of those many moments where Peter is reminded of the fact that he is an outsider in many of the circles Harry inhabits, despite Harry’s deep and abiding love for him.

But the rest of the place is as familiar to Peter as a second home, and it makes him ache inside, because he can see Gwen in every corner of it—the sleek leather sofa where they’d stretch out together to watch movies, Peter’s head at one end and Gwen’s at the other, and she’d complain about his sweaty stinky feet touching her, and he’d rub them all over her face in playful retaliation while she shrieked like she was being murdered, until Harry would come to rescue her, sitting on Peter’s chest and tickling him until he couldn’t breathe.

The coffee table where the whole gang would gather to get completely stoned and shit-faced and play Dungeons and Dragons, Harry whining about Gwen always getting to be the DM and everyone else drunkenly agreeing that she was the best at it, like she was the best at everything.

The armchair by the window where she liked to read, a book in her lap and her pale bare legs stretched out in front of her, looking up every now and again to cast a fondly exasperated look over at Harry and Peter while they slow danced together across the living room to a spooky old-timey country record MJ had bought at an estate sale. All those moments that had felt so ordinary and unremarkable at the time, like that was how they were always going to be—young and happy and together.

“You want another beer?” Harry asks, startling Peter out of his reminiscing.

“Uh, yeah. Sure,” Peter answers, clearing his throat to try and get rid of the tight knot there. He wanders over to the bookshelves on the far wall while Harry goes into the kitchen, his eyes traveling over the books and framed photos and various expensive knick-knacks lining the shelves without really seeing them, until his gaze settles on one picture in particular.

It’s a photograph of Gwen and Harry that Peter remembers taking the summer before their senior year of college, on a sticky hot day they’d spent together in Central Park. Gwen’s cheeks are dimpled with how wide she’s smiling, her eyes scrunched with happiness. Harry stands next to her, beaming just as brightly, his face pressed against hers, their arms wrapped around each other in a tight hug.

“It’s funny,” Harry says quietly as he comes up behind Peter. “Sometimes I’ll forget. I’ll see some dumb funny video and think to myself, Gwendy will love this, and I’ll pull her name up in my phone and start to send it to her, and then all of a sudden I’ll remember…she’s gone. Do you ever do that?”

Peter takes a quivering breath, shaking his head.

“No,” he says unsteadily. “I don’t…I can’t ever forget.”

He hears the soft clinking sound of beer bottles being set down on the glass top of the coffee table, and then Harry’s hugging him from behind, his chin resting on Peter’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Pete. I shoulda been here, after...” he says. “I didn’t mean to leave you alone. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Peter murmurs, tears running down his cheeks. _It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine…_

Harry lets him go, coming around to stand next to Peter. He reaches for the picture, looking at it. “I got really fucked up afterward. I felt like…shit didn’t matter anymore so what was the point of even trying to get better. It felt like…we were all together—we were _happy_ —and then everything fell apart. Like…there was a before and an after, and whatever it was that we all had together, it was gone with her. And I was so… _pissed._ At the whole fucking world. At _her._ I was so mad that she would do something like that to us. And then I felt even shittier, for being angry with her.”

He sets the photograph back on the shelf, his expression brooding.

“That day…she called me in the morning to wish me a happy birthday,” he continues quietly. “She sounded… _happy._ She talked about the party. She was gonna go to brunch with MJ and Ned. She invited me to come, but I turned her down because I was an idiot and I was hungover. God...I’d give anything— _anything_ —to go back and say yes to her. Have a little more time with her. Maybe...I would have been able to...”

Harry breaks off with a shuddering breath, looking down briefly before raising his head to look at Peter, his eyes shining. “I just keep thinking…did we miss something? Some…sign that she was thinking about doing that? Did she…ever say anything to you?”

Peter shakes his head, feeling like he can’t breathe, like the weight of it all—the truth and the lies and the guilt—is a stone pressing on his chest.

“I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have come here. I have to go,” he chokes out, turning away.

Harry grabs his arm, his eyes full of raw, desperate grief. “Don’t go. Please, Peter. You and Gwen…you were my only family—my only _real_ family. And now she’s gone. Don’t leave me, too.”

Peter looks at him, crushed under the same grief and shame.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Harry, pulling his arm free and leaving.


	5. prove to me I'm not gonna die alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was *going* to be the final chapter, but I got to writing and the next thing I knew it was close to 10k words, sooooo...I'm breaking it up and you're getting another chapter after this (unless THAT gets too long, too) XD.

Peter buries himself in Spider-Man in the following weeks, only taking the suit off to shower, sleeping in it and going to class in the morning with hair matted down to his skull from wearing the mask for hours on end. He thinks of it as a kind of penance, like if he just saves enough people it will make up for the ones he lost, tip the scale, but there’s an undercurrent of self-serving distraction to this work that he can’t ignore and which brings yet another layer of guilt. He doesn’t dream about Gwen when he comes stumbling home and drops into bed at four in the morning, exhausted to his very soul after hours of swinging around the city, doesn’t think about Harry or MJ or Ned or May. Doesn't think about Tony. 

His world contracts to a few simple tasks—class and work and Spider-Man, rinse and repeat, day after night after day after night, and he thinks if he just sticks strictly to this schedule, he’ll survive.

Or maybe not.

Peter stumbles up a stairwell in an abandoned derelict apartment building, clutching at his side where the shaft of harpoon emerges from under his ribs—an honest-to-god harpoon, fired at him by a crazy mustachioed Russian decked out in high-tech tactical gear, who has spent the better part of three days pursuing Spider-Man across the city in an intense game of cat-and-mouse.

“Karen, can I just…like…pull this thing out?” Peter asks, grasping the shaft of the harpoon close to where it disappears into his side.

 _“I would advise against it,”_ Karen replies. _“It could potentially cause further tissue damage and excessive bleeding, which—”_

Peter rips it out before she can finish, nearly biting through his tongue as the barbed head pulls free with a gush of scarlet and white hot pain. 

“Wow, that was a bad idea,” he mutters shakily through clenched teeth, sliding down the wall to slump on the stairs, watching blood bubble up and pour through the ragged tear he’s left in his side.

 _“I did warn you,”_ Karen tells him almost sulkily. _“Would you like me to call someone for aid?”_

“Nah, I’ll be fine. Let’s just go home. Call it a day,” Peter says, using the wall to pull himself back up to his feet. He takes a few staggering steps up the stairs, blinking away the dark spots that dance teasingly across his vision. 

_“I really think you should let me call someone.”_

“Karen, do you remember when that guy stabbed me in the leg? That bled way worse than this. Stop nagging.”

Peter manages to drag himself the rest of the way up the stairs to the battered access door to the roof. The door is locked, but it gives way under a little pressure from his hand. He staggers through it, tripping over his own heavy feet and landing hard on his knees. He curls forward over his folded legs until his cheek is resting on the rough cement of the roof, taking shallow little gulps of air.

 _“Peter?”_ Karen says. _“Your blood pressure is rapidly dropping.”_

“Yeah. I’m okay,” Peter slurs back. Blood is soaking through the material covering his thighs, cooling quickly in the cold air and making him shiver. “I’m just gonna...rest a minute and then we’ll go home.”

Karen backs off a bit, going silent, but she throws up his vitals on the HUD, enlarging them so that the warning lights and dropping numbers take up most of his vision.

“You can be so damn petty, K,” Peter mumbles, pushing himself upright on shaking arms. “Did I teach you that? Or did Tony program you to be that way?”

 _“I’m programmed to help you, Peter,”_ Karen replies mildly. _“Which is why I strongly suggest you call for assistance. I can notify Happy or Mr. Stark—”_

“I swear to god, Karen, I’ll shut you off,” Peter threatens, staggering up to his feet. He leans back against the door behind him as a wave of vertigo sets the rooftop spinning, clamping his eyes shut and swallowing down nausea.

“Yo, Spidey!” a voice calls down to him from somewhere overhead.

Peter cracks an eye open and watches as Johnny Storm touches down on the roof. Johnny runs a hand through his hair to smooth it down as his flames extinguish, flashing Peter a huge grin.

The smile evaporates a second later, Johnny’s eyes going huge and round as he gets a better look at Peter.

“Holy shit,” he says softly. He stands there for a moment on the edge of the roof like he’s frozen in place from shock, before visibly pulling himself together and racing towards Peter.

“Oh, fuck,” Johnny says, breathless, as he comes to a sliding stop in front of Peter, his wide eyes dancing over the bleeding hole in Peter’s side and up to his masked face. Johnny reaches out, his hands briefly hovering in the air between their bodies like he doesn’t know what to do with them, before he cups Peter’s face. “Oh...oh, fuck, man. What happened?”

“It’s alright,” Peter says, reaching up to grasp Johnny’s wrists and pull his hands away. “I’ll be fine.”

Johnny sucks in a breath, nodding. “Okay. Okay, yeah—I’m gonna get you help, okay? You just tell me where you need to go, and I’ll take you there, and they’ll fix this.”

Peter shakes his head, pushing away from the door and stumbling past Johnny. “I’m just gonna go home.”

“You’re just gonna go home?” Johnny repeats in disbelief, trailing close behind. “Is there...there’s someone at home who can help you, right?” 

Peter doesn’t answer. He takes another few unsteady steps before his legs fold underneath him again. Johnny catches him under the arms as he collapses, lowering him to the roof. He leans over Peter and presses a hand hard against the gushing wound, dragging a little pained mewl out of Peter.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Johnny breathes. His face is tight with worry, a furrow knitting between his brows. Peter wants to reach up and smooth it away, but his arms feel like they don’t belong to him anymore, refusing to cooperate. He blinks up at Johnny, struggling to catch his breath.

“God, you are so... _pretty,_ ” he mumbles.

Johnny snorts, a small, incredulous smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Are you seriously hitting on me right now? While you’re bleeding to death?”

“You _wish,_ ” Peter mutters back, trying and failing to sit up. “I hate your stupid pretty face, and your...stupid mouth, and...everything, and… _fuck_....”

He’s starting to cry for some reason, tears wetting the material of his mask, his breath coming in quavering gulps, and he hates that, too.

“Just go away,” he says, weakly pushing at Johnny. “Why won’t you just go away?”

Johnny doesn’t budge, the amusement gone from his face. “Dude, I can’t just leave you here. Kinda goes against the whole hero thing. And I think people would be pretty pissed if I didn’t save Spider-Man. You got a lotta fans in this city, me included.”

Peter releases a shaky breath. “You shouldn’t be...I did something really bad. If they knew...if you knew...”

“A lotta people do bad things,” Johnny says. “And I’ve watched you save them anyway. I’m not gonna leave you here like this. So listen—where am I supposed to take you? You got like…a preferred hospital? Do the Avengers have health insurance?”

Peter shakes his head. “I’m not an Avenger. And I don’t…I don’t need help. I’ll be fine.”

“Trust me—you are _not_ fine,” Johnny says firmly. “If you don’t give me any options, I’m gonna take you to the Baxter Building.”

Peter shakes his head again. “No…”

“I won’t let anyone take the mask off, I promise,” Johnny adds quickly. “Superhero bro code.”

“There is no… _no_ superhero bro code,” Peter insists.

“Okay, so give me a name,” Johnny says, almost pleadingly. “Come on. Tell me where I can take you. There has got to be _one_ person out there that you trust. _Please,_ man.”

 _Tony_. The thought floats up unbidden out of the haze suffusing Peter’s mind, but vanishes just as quickly. He blinks slowly, eyelids heavy, looking up at Johnny’s face hovering above him. The afternoon sun makes a corona behind Johnny’s head, radiant and golden.

“You,” Peter murmurs. “I trust you.”

Something shifts in Johnny’s expression, the worry softening. “Okay. Okay—I got you.”

He tucks an arm around Peter’s shoulders and slides the other under his knees, scooping him up and carrying him towards the edge of the roof.

“Wow, you’re so strong,” Peter mumbles, head lolling limply against Johnny’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I get it—you want the D,” Johnny replies, grunting as he shifts Peter’s dead weight around. “Let’s make sure you don’t die first, buddy.”

He comes to a stop at the edge of the roof, hoisting Peter up a little higher. “You still with me? It’s about to get a little windy. Brace yourself.”

“I’m here. Please don’t drop me,” Peter mumbles back, letting his heavy eyelids fall shut.

“I’m not gonna drop you,” Johnny assures him. “I’ve never dropped you.”

“Uh, yes, you have,” Peter reminds him. “You did.”

“Yeah, but I caught you, remember? So it doesn’t really count,” Johnny says with another smile and a wink as he steps off the roof.

They drop through thin air for a moment before swooping upwards, and the last thing Peter remembers is a sense of all-encompassing heat, like being wrapped in a sunbeam.

***

When he opens his eyes again, he’s lying in a bathtub in an unfamiliar bathroom, feeling like his limbs are encased in concrete, like every breath is a white-hot knife stabbing him under the ribs, agonizing.

Johnny’s sitting on the edge of the tub, one leg crossed over the other, his foot bouncing as he looks down at his phone. A woman’s voice is speaking from the screen, giving detailed instructions on how to stitch a cut.

“Are you learning how to do this from a YouTube video?” Peter asks weakly, frowning.

Johnny glances down at him, offering a reassuring smile. “Yeah. I’ve never done this before. It’s cool, though—she’s a nurse. She’s got a whole channel for first aid stuff. I got this.”

“Your confidence actually scares me more than if you were nervous,” Peter mumbles, blinking heavily behind the lenses of his mask and taking shallow gulps of air, shivering from pain and cold. 

Johnny presses a hand to Peter’s head. “Just go back to sleep, dude. It’ll be easier for both of us. I’ll fix you up.”

“If I come to and find out you’ve stitched your initials into my body or something, I’ll break your fucking arms,” Peter slurs at him, before slipping back into the void.

He wakes again to find himself in a bed in a dimly lit room this time. He blinks up at the ceiling, disoriented, a coil of panic tightening in his stomach. He flinches when a weight drops onto the bed beside him and a dark figure leans over him, but the hand that’s lain against his head is warm and gentle. 

“MJ?” Peter whispers.

“Who’s MJ?” Johnny’s voice asks.

“No one,” Peter lies. He reaches up towards his face, relief blooming in his chest when his trembling fingers touch the material of the mask.

“You didn’t…?” he asks.

Johnny shakes his head. “I didn’t take the mask off. Didn’t even sneak a little peek.” He smiles. “You might not believe in superhero bro code, but I take that shit very seriously.”

“You’re an idiot, but I appreciate that,” Peter replies, turning his head to look around at the unfamiliar surroundings. The walls are lined with posters, including several of Spider-Man, and a Spider-Man bobble-head figurine sits amidst the chaos on top of a messy desk under the window.

“Is this your room?” he asks, frowning. “Why do you have so much Spider-Man shit? Are you gonna, like…break my ankles with a sledgehammer and hold me hostage or something?”

“I was actually planning on suffocating you with a pillow while you slept, and then installing your mummified corpse on the Spider-Man altar I keep in my closet,” Johnny says drolly before grinning again. “Nah—I told you, I’m a big fan, but not a deranged one, I swear. Relax.”

Peter continues to frown, shaking his head. Every breath he takes sends a sharp pain stabbing through his side. He lifts the comforter covering him and peers under it. His side is bandaged, the white gauze and surgical tape spotted with crimson blooms, and he’s been dressed in loose pajama pants. He drops the comforter, his frown deepening.

“Where’s my suit?” he asks. “Why’d you take it off? Did you look at my junk?”

“Dude, I’ve seen your junk before. Like, many times now,” Johnny points out. “I’m _intimately_ familiar with it.”

“Okay, yeah, but like...not while I’m unconscious and vulnerable,” Peter says indignantly, pulling the comforter up under his chin. 

Johnny rolls his eyes. “Look, your suit was all bloody and nasty. I’m not gonna put you in my bed like that. I took the suit off and cleaned you up, and got you dressed. I didn’t parade you naked down every street in Manhattan or something. And you’re welcome for saving your life, by the way.”

“Where’s my suit?” Peter asks again, struggling to sit up. “I should go.”

“I gave it to Reed.”

Peter’s head jerks up to look at Johnny. “You gave my suit to Reed? Why would you give my suit to Reed?”

“It had a big hole in it. I gave it to him so he could fix it, that’s all. Seriously—relax, would you?” Johnny says, pushing down on Peter’s shoulders. “He doesn’t know you’re here. I told him you dropped it off.”

Peter resists the pressure on his shoulders, pushing back. “That’s my _suit._ ” 

“Dude—chill,” Johnny insists while Peter continues to struggle against him. “I swear on my life he’s not gonna do anything weird to it. Have I given you _any_ reason so far to not trust me?” 

Peter stops fighting. He drops back onto the mattress, clutching at his aching side and taking short, shallow breaths through clenched teeth. 

“Just stay until morning, okay?” Johnny says, settling back a little and crossing an ankle over his knee. “You need something for the pain?”

“No, I’m okay,” Peter says, wincing. “I’ve had worse.”

“Okay.” Johnny lays a hand against Peter’s head again. “Go back to sleep. I think you really need to sleep, man.”

Peter nods, so exhausted he feels sick to his stomach. He looks up at Johnny, swallowing hard.

“Can you...will you stay here with me?” he asks quietly, feeling like he will shatter into a thousand pieces if Gwen comes to him tonight while he’s alone and so fragile.

“Yeah, sure, if you want,” Johnny replies, offering Peter a soft smile. 

He leans over and switches the lamp on the bedside table off, and then he climbs into bed next to Peter and pulls the comforter over their heads, cocooning them in soft, warm darkness. Peter has a weird flashback to being a little kid, to when he and Ned would have sleepovers and build forts out of blankets and pillows and tuck themselves inside, safe and secure from whatever school bullies had been harassing them that week, from the humiliating ordeal of gym class, from Spanish pop quizzes and all the other childhood indignities they endured.

“Take the mask off,” Johnny says. He’s lying close enough that Peter can feel the warmth of his breath through the material of the mask, but he can’t make out more than a vague outline of Johnny’s features in the dark.

Peter wets his lips, his mouth gone suddenly dry. “No.”

“You said you trusted me,” Johnny reminds him. “Take it off.”

“It’s too dark to see,” Peter murmurs back. His heart is pounding in his chest.

Johnny snorts. “That’s the point, dumbass. Take it off.”

Peter hesitates, swallowing hard again. And then he reaches up and slowly pulls the mask off.

Johnny cups Peter’s bare face in his hands, more clinical than tender, carefully running his fingers along Peter’s jaw and cheeks and across his lips and down the bridge of his nose, and then combing them through Peter’s hair.

“I knew it,” Johnny says finally, his exploration complete.

“What?” Peter asks, heart stuttering.

“I’ve been fucking an ugly little white boy.”

Peter lets out a laugh that turns into a groan as it tugs on the stitches in his side.

“You’re so stupid,” he tells Johnny, smiling.

“Yeah, I am,” Johnny agrees. “I could fuck anyone I want, and instead I spend all my time chasing your busted scrawny little ass around. How many times have you broken your nose? It’s got more kinks than PornHub.”

“I keep telling you to leave me alone,” Peter reminds him.

“I know. That’s why I like you,” Johnny says warmly, tugging on Peter’s hair and then cupping his face in his hands again. “Everyone else...I dunno if they’re hanging around ‘cause they _actually_ like me, or ‘cause they like hanging out with a famous superhero. But you?” His teeth flash white in the darkness as he grins. “You hate my guts.”

“I don’t hate you,” Peter admits, gently pulling Johnny’s hands away from his face. “That’s the problem.”

He puts the mask back on. His side aches, a deep, pulling pain, and fatigue weighs his limbs down. He wants to sleep for a thousand years.

“I’m cold,” he says quietly.

Johnny tucks the comforter in tighter around them and shifts closer, his body warm and solid against Peter’s side.

***

Peter leaves early the following morning, turning down Johnny’s invitation for him to stay longer, and then Johnny’s invitation for breakfast, gingerly easing into his suit and running a hand over the seamlessly repaired nanofibers, better even than any of the patchjobs Tony had done over the years. 

“You sure you’re good?” Johnny asks, leaning out the open bedroom window and looking down at Peter where he crouches against the side of the building.

“I’m good,” Peter insists. He hesitates, peering back up at Johnny. 

“Thank you,” he adds quietly.

Johnny gives him a lopsided smile, shrugging. “I’d say anytime, but I’d really rather not do that again. Next time you come let’s just watch a football game or something, okay?”

Peter doesn’t reply to that. He has no intention of there ever being a next time, but he doesn’t have the heart to lie again, either. He launches a web and swings away from the Baxter Building, ignoring the pain that flares in his side as he heads to Columbia’s campus for his morning classes.

The pain worsens through the morning, enough that it becomes distracting despite Peter’s well-honed skill for ignoring injuries, and by the time he heads to his shift at the clinic it’s nearly incapacitating. His boss sends him home around three in the afternoon after a coworker finds Peter kneeling in a stall in the bathroom, hugging the toilet and violently shivering, the back of his shirt drenched in chilly sweat. 

He makes it back to his apartment and crawls into bed, his whole body still seized up with tremors. He curls up under the blanket, his side aching so badly it brings tears to his eyes, and he thinks that this is the most alone he’s ever felt since Gwen died.

He fumbles for his backpack where he’s dumped it next to the mattress, pulling the Spider-Man mask out of it and then putting the mask on.

“Hey, Karen.”

 _“Hello, Peter,”_ the A.I. replies. _“Your temperature is elevated. Do you need assistance?”_

“No, I’m okay. Just...could we play another game?”

_“Of course.”_

He lets Karen distract him until the exhaustion dragging down his body outweighs the pain enough for him to feel like he can finally drift off. He tugs the mask off, rolling over to face the door before he succumbs to sleep.

When he wakes some time later, the apartment is dark and Gwen is standing in his room in front of the door.

Peter sucks in a sharp breath, feeling like he’s been doused in ice-cold water. For a moment he can’t move, his mouth gone dry, staring at her while she looks right back at him, silent.

He’s freed from this stasis when his lungs start to burn from holding his breath. He picks the Spider-Man mask up from where it’s sitting on the pillow and tugs it over his head with shaking fingers, never taking his eyes off Gwen.

“Karen?” he whispers.

_“Hello, Peter.”_

“Is there...” he swallows hard. “Is there someone else in this room?”

_“My sensors aren’t picking up anyone else present.”_

Peter swallows again, his heart racing, humming in his ribcage. “You’re sure?”

_“Yes, Peter. You’re alone.”_

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, the blanket balled up tight in his fists shoved under his chin. He can hear his pulse rushing in his ears, drowning out the usual cacophony of noises coming from his neighbors and the building’s ancient rumbling pipes and the traffic outside. He slowly, silently counts to ten. Then he cautiously opens his eyes.

Gwen is lying on the floor beside his mattress, her face inches away from his, her eyes open and unseeing. Peter stares at her, his whole body gone rigid once more, frozen in an absolute, all-consuming terror.

Gwen lifts her head suddenly, looking straight at him.

“Peter...” she says, the exact same way she’d called his name on the bridge.

Peter bolts up off the mattress like he’s been electrocuted, scrambling backwards until he collides with the wall and then climbing straight up it to the ceiling, his chest heaving, his heart violently pounding like a fist against his sternum. He scrambles across the ceiling towards the other side of the room, not daring to look down. He drops back to the floor and scrabbles for his backpack. He yanks the mask off, stuffing it with shaking hands into the backpack along with some clothes. He keeps his back to the mattress the whole time, but he can still feel Gwen there, sense the weight and shape of her. He’s sobbing now, choking as he gasps for air, shaking all over. He snatches his keys off the desk, drops them twice before he’s able to fumble open the door and escape into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind himself and locking it.

He doesn’t remember the journey across town, just that he’s somehow made it to Harry’s brownstone. He’s left his coat at his apartment and he stands there on the front stoop, shivering from cold and a lingering sense of dread and horror as he pulls his phone out of his backpack and shakily makes a call. 

It rings a few times, and then Harry’s sleepy voice answers.

“Hello?” 

“It’s me,” Peter says, clutching his phone. “I’m outside.”

“Peter?” Harry murmurs, confused. “You’re…? Okay, hang on—”

The call ends. Peter waits, hugging himself tightly, and then the door opens and Harry appears, looking sleep-tousled and worried.

“Pete?” he asks, stepping outside. “What—”

“Can I stay here?” Peter blurts out, shivering. “Please. I don’t want to be alone.”

Harry’s expression softens with understanding. 

“Yeah, of course,” he says. He takes another step closer and pulls Peter into a tight embrace. He holds him for a moment before leaning back, his expression worried once more.

“Jesus, you’re burning up,” Harry says, frowning. He pulls gently on Peter’s arm. “Come inside.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter mumbles as he follows Harry inside. “I didn’t know where else to go. I’m sorry.”

“Pete, for god’s sake—stop apologizing,” Harry says, helping Peter up the stairs. “You’re always welcome here, you know that.”

He guides Peter into the bedroom, gently pushing him to sit on the bed and then kneeling down to take off Peter’s shoes. 

“I’m gonna get you some water, okay?” Harry says, pressing on Peter’s shoulders to get him to lie down.

Peter grabs at him, panicked. “Don’t leave. Don’t leave.”

“I’ll be right back, I promise.”

“I saw her, Harry,” Peter says brokenly, tears running down his temples. “Gwen. I saw her in my apartment. She said my name.”

Harry makes a soft distressed sound, his eyes shining. He grabs Peter’s hand, gently squeezing it. “Gwen’s gone, Pete. She wasn’t there. You’re really sick and you’re seeing things, that’s all. You have a bad fever. I’m gonna call your aunt, okay? I’m gonna tell her to meet us at the hospital.”

Peter shakes his head. “No. Don’t. Please.”

“Peter—”

“ _Please,_ ” Peter begs. “Just stay here with me. I just need you to stay with me.”

Harry chews his lip, indecision written all over his face.

“Okay,” he says finally, sitting down on the edge of the bed and squeezing Peter’s hand again. “I’m here. I’m not gonna leave.”

Peter closes his eyes, turning his face away from the door, weakly clinging to Harry’s hand. He slips in and out of awareness, sleeping sometimes only to jolt awake over and over again, his heart racing, the images of the bridge and the black water and Gwen’s unseeing gaze lingering in his mind like an afterglow.

A hand touches his sweaty brow, pushing his hair back.

“MJ…” he whispers, his heart thudding in his chest.

“It’s me,” Harry murmurs. “You want me to call her?”

Peter doesn’t answer, slipping back into tangled fever dreams.

The bridge. The black water. The helicopters’ spotlights. Gwen’s unseeing eyes and MJ’s tears. May’s pleading expression. Tony tapping the rim of his coffee cup in time with the beating pulse of Peter’s heart.

_Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap._

The bridge. The black water. The helicopters’ spotlights…

***

When he claws his way to wakefulness once more, he feels drained, like he’s run several marathons in a row, his limbs heavy and his eyes dry and achy, but the shivering from the fever has stopped and his body feels like it belongs to him again. He blinks heavy eyelids at the ceiling a few times before turning his head, that small movement feeling like a monumental task.

Harry is still sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, his head bent, holding the Spider-Man mask in his hands.

Peter feels like the world stops for a moment, the breath leaving his lungs in a sharp exhale.

Harry looks over at him. He lifts the mask.

“I was trying to find your phone in your backpack,” he explains. “Things got really rough there for a while. I wanted to at least call your aunt, but…”

He trails off, looking down at the mask in his hands.

“Harry…” Peter says breathlessly.

“It’s funny…I used to get kinda jealous of Gwendy. You guys were so close. Like...she knew this part of you that you wouldn’t ever let me see. Like the two of you were in on some big secret together. And you were, weren’t you?” Harry asks, running a thumb over the mask. He looks over at Peter again. “She knew?”

Peter nods. He’s crying again, silently.

Harry lets out a little laugh, shaking his head. “I used to think you were like, the biggest flake on the planet. You were so smart, but you could never get your shit together. Drove me crazy. It all makes a lot of sense now.” He turns towards Peter again, his eyes soft. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I would’ve kept your secret. I’d do _anything_ for you, Peter.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says hoarsely. “I just...I was trying to protect you.”

“I’ve read stuff about that night, when Gwen died…People say Spider-Man was there that night. _You_ were there that night,” Harry says quietly. “Is that true?”

Peter wets his lips. “Yes.”

Something fractures in Harry’s face for a second, before the calm returns. “Tell me. I wanna know everything. You owe me the truth. No more lies, Pete. It’s time to come clean.”

Peter nods again, tears rolling slowly down his temples.

“She didn’t kill herself,” he says. “That’s a lie. They took her because of me. Grabbed her off the street, the afternoon of your party. She was—leverage. They knew we were coming for them. We cornered them on the bridge, and they threw her off. I tried...” he stops, his voice breaking. “I tried to catch her....I did catch her, but…I didn’t do it right. I tried to save her—I swear to god, Harry, I was just trying to save her. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Harry says nothing for a long time, his face unmoved, bone-white. Then he reaches down and tenderly wipes the tears from Peter’s face with the pad of his thumb.

“Fuck you, Pete,” he says, and then he leaves.


	6. trust me to take you home

Peter’s tiny apartment is dark and empty when he returns to it, absent of any lingering signs of Gwen’s presence—but there wouldn’t be any, of course. It isn’t the apartment that she haunts, and there’s no place Peter can run to escape her.

He tries anyway, shimmying into the Spider-Man suit and ducking through the window out into the chilly night beyond, swinging aimlessly past buildings and weaving recklessly through traffic. The stitches in his side split and his healing skin tears open from the twisting and exertion, blood bubbling up through the suit’s material and leaving a dark glossy stain from his ribs to his hip, but he barely registers the pain.

_“Peter?”_ Karen says softly, her voice sounding even kinder and more maternal than usual. _“You seem distressed. May I call someone for you?”_

“I’m fine, K,” he says dully, skimming low over the top of a bus. “I just want to be alone for a little while. That’s all.”

He swings faster, farther, the buildings passing by in a blur of solid shadows, the traffic below a swirling, steaming mess of blinking lights and color and clouds of exhaust. He has no idea how long he swings, his sense of time dilated and nebulous, measured only by the burning of overworked muscles in his arms and shoulders.

And then he finds himself, inexplicably, at the river.

In the distance, the lights of the bridge shine like a pearled strand of beacons in the dark. He stands on the riverbank and stares at them until the lights blur and smear together, and then he starts wandering towards them, the sounds of the city fading in and out as he gets closer and closer to the bridge.

He stops below it, his feet sinking into the soft wet mud of the riverbank.

_“Peter, it’s late and you’re tired. Let’s visit your aunt,”_ Karen suggests. _“She would love to see you again.”_

Peter shakes his head. “I can’t go back there.”

_“Why not? She loves you very much. She wants to see you again.”_

Peter peers up at the looming expanse of the bridge overhead, listening to the echoing rumble of vehicles passing across it.

“Do you remember this place, Karen?” he asks quietly.

There’s a pause.

_“I no longer have access to those video files, Peter,”_ Karen gently reminds me.

“I know,” Peter says, but it doesn’t matter because he can see it all clearly in his mind’s eye, as if it’s been etched there, carved in deep.

The bridge. The black water. The helicopters’ spotlights.

Gwen stands precariously on the edge of the bridge outside the rail, her hair whipped around by the gusts of wind being blown from the helicopters’ rotor blades. The man they’ve been pursuing holds her like a shield in front of his body, his arm clenched tight around her neck, his other hand pointing a gun towards the huddle of SHIELD agents taking cover behind their unmarked vehicles blocking either end of the bridge. The man’s sweating—Peter, perched high on one the bridge’s suspender cables, can see droplets running down his temples, the wild whites of his eyes. A desperate man, a panicked man, holding Gwen’s life in his hands...

Peter shimmies down the cable, dropping down onto the bridge beside Sam. He’s sweating, too, despite the cold, his suit sticking between his shoulder blades.

“This isn’t working,” he tells Sam, shifting his weight back and forth on the balls of his feet. “You gotta let me get in closer.”

Sam shakes his head, hefting his shield up. “We screw this up and we endanger more civilians.”

“Okay, so let me handle it,” Peter insists, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I can do it. Non-lethal extraction—that’s why you brought me on this mission, right? Sam, please….”

“The situation’s changed. You’re compromised, Pete,” Sam says. “You gotta sit this one out.”

Peter briefly tears his eyes away from Gwen to look at him, blinking rapidly. “Are you benching me? Sam—”

“I’m telling you to let the negotiators try to do their job before we go in guns blazing and fuck this up even worse,” Sam cuts him off sharply. Then, more gently, “I know this isn’t easy, but we got a little time, still. Give me a little time, kid.”

Peter sucks in a ragged breath, the cold air stinging the back of his throat, never feeling more helpless in his life as he stands there and watches his worst nightmare unfold before his eyes.

Then one of the SHIELD helicopters hovering overhead drops lower, armed men leaning out the open hatch on the side, the spotlight trained on the bridge below. The man holding Gwen wrenches her around in response, grabbing her by the back of the neck and forcing her to lean out over the water while she sobs.

“I’ll throw her!” the man threatens, shaking Gwen like a rag doll. “I’ll throw this little bitch in the river!”

“Tell the choppers to back off,” Peter says breathlessly, his heart racing. “Sam—tell them to back the fuck off!”

“Parker, you need to hold it together, man,” Sam replies, but it’s too late for that—Peter had already started to unravel hours earlier, the second he found out Gwen had been snatched off the street as she left the bakery with Harry’s cake, the second someone threatened a person he loved, the second they _hurt_ her.

The man shakes Gwen again. Her foot slips off the edge of the bridge and she cries out, a small, terrified sound, and whatever restraint Peter has left is gone. He’s going to save her, he’s going to save her and then he’s going to kill these men, he’s going to rip them apart with his bare hands for daring to hurt her.

He rushes towards them, ignoring Sam’s commands to stop, stepping into the blinding white beams of the helicopters’ spotlights.

“Peter...” Gwen says when she sees him coming towards her, her eyes shining with relief, her voice full of love and trust as the man shoves her and she falls away from the bridge towards the black water below.

She’s falling and he’s still too far away, but he’s going to catch her, he’s going to, he’s going to save her...

She’s falling backwards towards the water, face up. She’s looking up at him, her eyes on him, as she falls. She looking up at him as he fires a web at her, her eyes still so full of trust, because he’s going to save her, because she trusts him with her life, she said so herself...

She’s looking up at him when the web catches her, her eyes on him as the silk stretches under the weight of her falling body, her eyes on him until the line suddenly goes taut, her head snapping back and—

_“Peter, I think you should let me call someone,”_ Karen pipes up again, more firmly this time.

Peter startles at the sound of her voice, jolted back to the present moment. He turns away from the bridge without answering her, wandering aimlessly again for a time, before eventually heading towards one of the big empty warehouses lining the dock alongside the river. He slips inside the building through a broken window, ducking under a shattered pane of glass.

It’s still and quiet inside, the noises from the city muffled and distant. Dust puffs up under his feet as he walks deeper into the cavernous space, past rows of thick upright beams.

He stops next to one of the pillars, pressing a hand against it to steady himself. He’s breathing hard, like he’s just been running flat-out for miles, or maybe he’s crying—he isn’t sure anymore, completely overwhelmed. He’s panting and it still feels like he’s suffocating, like he’s drowning. He’s in an empty warehouse but all he can see is the bridge and the black water and Gwen’s open, unseeing eyes, can feel the limp deadweight of her body in his arms when he’d pulled her up and held her, cradling her to his chest and begging, _pleading_ with her to say something, to stay with him, knowing that she’s gone, gone, gone. He sees MJ’s tears and May’s gentle pleading and Ned’s stubborn, aching loyalty. He sees Harry’s face, bone-white and eyes dark with the terrible knowledge of the truth, the unyielding line of his back as he walks out of the room, out of Peter’s life, as gone to him as Gwen and every bit as much his fault.

Peter rears back and slams his fist into the pillar, sending a cloud of pulverized concrete into the air. The pain of the impact is grounding, so he hits the pillar again and again, cracking through the concrete to the cinderblocks underneath, and then smashing through the cinderblocks to the rebar within. 

He doesn’t stop even when the rebar cracks and shears apart and the suit’s nanofibers split open across his knuckles and each slam of his fist leaves a syrupy red blossom on the bare steel at the pillar’s core. He keeps hitting it, even when the steel starts to dent and bow out, the metal groaning and sagging like a wounded animal under the onslaught. He keeps hitting it even as Karen starts flashing warnings across the HUD and listing off injuries he’s inflicting on himself in an increasingly concerned tone, until he finally rips off the mask and throws it aside and keeps pounding away at the steel, harder and harder, each impact searing like a bolt of lightning up the length of his arm and deep into his shoulder and chest.

And then he’s being tugged backwards, a pair of arms wrapped tight around his chest from behind.

“Hey, hey, hey—alright, kid, that’s enough,” a voice says in his ear. “That’s enough. You’re done. You’re done. You’re done.”

It’s like a switch going off. Peter goes boneless, sagging in Tony’s embrace, and the two of them sink down together to the dusty floor. Peter twists around until he can press his face against Tony’s shoulder, eyes clenched shut, shaking all over. A sob convulses his whole body, dragged out of him almost violently, a gut-wrenched barbed thing, and he clutches at Tony with the hand he hasn’t maimed.

“I killed her, Mr. Stark,” he says brokenly, sucking in a ragged breath.

“I know,” Tony says, cupping Peter’s head in his hand and gently rocking him back and forth. “I know, kid, I know.”

***

The physical pain comes later, when he’s been bundled off to Tony’s penthouse and calmed down a little. Peter welcomes it—it’s a narrower, more focused pain, different from the all-consuming agony of grief and guilt. Tony had wrapped Peter’s hand and arm in a towel up to the elbow for the car ride home, but Peter tugs it loose now while Tony is off rummaging in the bathroom for the heavy duty first aid kit he keeps specifically for Peter.

Peter sits at the kitchen table and dispassionately examines his hand in the bright recessed lighting—if the mess of splintered bone and raw bloody meat at the end of his arm could even be called a hand anymore.

Tony comes into the kitchen and rounds the island, first aid kit tucked under his arm, and then he stops short, eyes locked on Peter’s mangled limb. Something passes over his face, like a perfect reflection of Peter’s own grief and pain. It immediately makes Peter want to cry again, overcome with intense regret, feeling like he’s seeing clearly for the first time in months.

“Tony, I’m sorry,” he says, his voice breaking, and that shakes Tony loose. He comes the rest of the way over, setting the first aid kit down on the table and sitting in the chair next to Peter.

“It’s alright. I’ve got the best hand surgeon in the country flying in right now. I’ve already sent her the scans so she and her team can come up with a plan, and FRIDAY’s cutting some titanium screws. I’m just gonna clean this up a little and grab some things, and then we’ll head to HQ and get this fixed up right,” Tony says matter-of-factly, opening up the kit and pulling on a pair of gloves.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says again. “I’m sorry I did this to us.”

Tony says nothing at first, his eyes shining again with that grief and pain as he reaches for Peter’s injured hand. He gently cleans up the mess in silence for a time, and then says, “You know, I used to think that when something bad happened, you were supposed to find meaning in it—some silver lining, some...lesson you were supposed to learn so this kind of thing didn’t happen again. So you could make it right. So you could atone for it. And then I got a little older, lived a little more life, saw a little more of the world, and I realized that sometimes a tragedy is just that—a tragedy. A loss. And you just gotta learn to live with it. You’re not gonna get it right every time, and the guilt, and the second-guessing, and the _pain_ —it doesn’t go away. You just figure out how to survive with it, day after day, as best as you can. That’s all you can do.”

He turns Peter’s hand over, wrapping gauze around it.

“But I can tell you that that’s a hell of a lot easier to do with your friends and family around to support you,” Tony continues. “And if there’s anything to be gleaned from this, then maybe it’s years and years down the line, when you’re an old man, and your son or your daughter is sitting at the kitchen table with you, and you can’t tell them that everything’s gonna be alright, you can’t fix it for them, but you can tell them that they are loved—so, so worthy of love—no matter what. That there’s not a goddamn thing they could ever do to change that. And they’ll know in their heart that it’s true, because you’ll be able to say it with such conviction.”

He gets up from the table, pressing a hand into the crown of Peter’s head.

“Maybe you’re not ready to accept that yet,” Tony says. “That’s alright. You take your time, and when you’re ready, you come home. The door’s always open for you, Pete. Okay?”

“Okay,” Peter agrees softly, his heart aching. But it’s a different kind of pain entirely, something warm and softer around the edges, deeper.

***

The surgeons work their medical magic at the compound upstate, and aided by a potent dose of drugs, Peter slips into hours of blessedly dreamless sleep. He wakes from time to time, bleary-eyed and doped up, disturbed by a nurse checking on him or by one of the mysterious beeping machines in his recovery room. Tony is with him each time he wakes, sitting in the chair beside the bed, sometimes scrolling on his phone or messing around with something on a tablet, or sometimes seeming to be doing nothing at all except being present.

“You don’t have to stay,” Peter mumbles to him the next time he wakes. “I’m not gonna leave this time. I promise.”

Tony lays a hand against Peter’s forehead, rubbing a thumb along his hairline. “Go to sleep, kid.”

***

He dreams about Gwen again.

This time he’s back in the summer before his senior year of college—mid-July, hot and humid even at night, the folds of his elbows and knees damp and sticky, a riot of cicadas noisily purring in the surrounding trees.

“The stars are so bright out here,” Gwen murmurs beside him. They’re lying on their backs on the dock at Tony’s lake house, gazing up at the night sky with its brilliant streamers of stars like seafoam splashed across velvet. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars in my life.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, folding an arm behind his head and crossing his legs at the ankles.

“They almost don’t look real,” Gwen muses. “Actually, every time I come up here it feels surreal. If someone had told me three years ago I’d be besties with Spider-Man and vacation at Iron Man’s lake house during summer breaks, I would have laughed them out of the room. I wrote a whole paper about how Tony Stark was my hero when I was in the fifth grade, and now he calls me ‘Gwendolyne darling’ like your favorite gay uncle or something. I’ve seen _Pepper-freaking-Potts_ sing Disney karaoke in her pajamas. What is my life?”

“Just wait till Tony starts sending you pornographic Captain America pixel art gifs he’s made himself at three in the morning,” Peter says. “The shine really starts to wear off then.”

Gwen snorts, folding her hands over her chest. “Honestly, if it means I get to lie out here and look at these stars again next summer, it will be worth it.”

“Yeah. Maybe we should get a lake house,” Peter suggests. “Run away together. Forget about final exams and labs and all that bullshit. Retire now.”

Gwen snorts again, turning her head to look at Peter, one eyebrow quirked. “Who’s gonna bankroll all that?”

“Mm…Tony, of course,” Peter says, flashing her a cheeky smile. “You know him—he’s a total pushover and a sap. He’d do anything for me.”

“Wow, you’re powerful,” Gwen says dryly. “Must be nice, having a billionaire at your beck and call.”

Peter shrugs. “It has its perks.”

“And what about Harry? And MJ and Ned?” Gwen asks. “What about your aunt?”

“They’d come, too. And your dad and your brothers. One big happy family.”

“And what about Spider-Man?” Gwen asks, more seriously. “Would you _really_ give that all up for a lake house in the woods?”

Peter doesn’t answer for a moment, letting the sawing of the cicadas fill in the silence.

“No,” he says finally. “I wouldn’t. I can’t.”

“I know,” Gwen says, her smile a little sad now. She looks back up at the stars. “Maybe that’s part of why this feels so special.”

“Yeah,” Peter agrees.

They fall into a companionable silence, lazily swatting away mosquitoes and listening to the nightime cacophony of insects and chirping frogs.

“Oh!” Gwens says suddenly, her arm shooting up to point overhead. “Oh, did you see that? A shooting star...”

“I’m pretty sure that was just an airplane.”

Gwen smacks Peter’s chest with the flat of her hand. “It was a shooting star, you dope. Make a wish.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Peter says, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “I made a wish.”

“What was it?”

“I wished for a late growth spurt,” Peter replies. “Three extra inches. It’s not a big ask. Surely the universe could grant me that after everything it’s put me through.”

Gwen huffs out a little exasperated laugh. “You can be so vain sometimes.”

“It’s not vanity—it’s practical,” Peter insists. “I can’t reach the plates on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet in my apartment unless I climb on the countertop. It’s very inconvenient.”

“Right. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that MJ _can_ reach the plates, and she mercilessly mocks you for this,” Gwen says drolly.

“Not at all. I’m _glad_ MJ is taller than me. If we were both short, we’d be in a lot of trouble. No one could reach the plates then.”

“Sure, sure.”

“What about you?” Peter asks, looking over at Gwen again. “What was your wish.”

Gwen takes a breath. “Same thing I always wish for, every day.”

“What’s that?”

Gwen turns her head to look back at Peter, her eyes soft and warm.

“That you’ll be safe,” she tells him. “That whatever happens, you’ll come home to us.”

***

When Peter wakes again, Tony is gone and MJ is sitting in the chair beside his bed. 

There are dark circles like bruises under her eyes and her lips are chapped. She looks tired and pale and so perfect that it makes Peter’s chest hurt.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want me here,” she says, when she sees that he’s awake. “You’ve been calling my name.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Peter murmurs. “I was gonna say...I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t come home to you.”

MJ looks away for a moment, blinking, her lips pressed into a tight line and her throat working. She turns her head back towards him, her eyes glossy.

“Say it again,” she demands, her voice breaking.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

MJ takes a shaky breath, nodding, tears running down her cheeks.

“I told Harry,” Peter says, his own vision swimming with tears. “I told him the truth, and he left. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“He loved her,” MJ replies. She goes quiet a moment, looking down at her hands twisting together in her lap.

“I loved her, too,” she finally says, her voice pitched low and soft. “I really miss her, too. I see her everywhere. I think about her when I wake up, and when I go to sleep. Sometimes I sleep in her bed, just to feel close to her. You and Harry ran away after, and…I just wanted to talk about her. That’s all. Everyone else...they’re gonna stop doing the vigils and decorating the bridge, and everyone will eventually move on, and no one’s gonna talk about her except as this...character in part of a conspiracy theory or whatever, on some niche web site or stupid true crime podcast. I want to remember her like...like she really was. Our friend. I want to talk about Gwen. And...I’m just so _tired_ of carrying this alone. I don’t want to do this alone. I _can’t_ do this alone anymore.”

“I don’t want to do it alone anymore, either,” Peter says, swiping at the tears on his cheeks with the heel of his hand. “I want to talk about her, too.”

MJ reaches over and turns his face towards her.

“You told me the truth about what happened to her at the funeral. You wanted me to hate you, but I don’t. You wanted me to blame you, but I won’t. Gwen made a choice to love you. She knew how dangerous it could be, and she made a choice. Don’t you _dare_ take that away from her,” she says, tears shining in her eyes. “Don’t you dare take that away from me, either.”

“I won’t,” Peter promises.

MJ reaches for his hand and he lets her take it, sliding his fingers in between hers, interlocking them and pressing their palms tight together, like he’s never going to let her go, like he’s never going to leave her again.

***

He goes home to his aunt’s apartment a few weeks later, his arm encased in a heavy cast from fingers to shoulder and stuck in a sling, his hand itching fiercely under its layers of wrapping.

He raps softly at the apartment door and waits a few beats in the narrow hallway, until the lock turns and the door opens and May appears on the other side of the threshold. She blinks owlishly up at him, speechless with surprise.

“Hey, May,” Peter says, offering her a smile, and the sound of his voice seems to confirm to her that he isn’t some apparition, because a smile immediately lights up her own face as she steps forward to wrap him in a tight hug.

“Oh!” she says, squeezing him. “Peter! I’ve missed you, honey.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” Peter murmurs against her hair, his own return of her embrace made slightly awkward with his injured arm trapped in between their bodies. “I, um…I was actually wondering if I could stay here for a little while?”

“Of course you can. I’d love for you to stay,” May replies, giving him another tight squeeze. She leans back, still holding him by the shoulders, her expression changing from elation to concern.

“Are you alright?” she asks, running a critical eye over him, her eyebrows knitting together into a frown as her gaze falls on the cast and sling. “Oh, honey…what happened?”

“It’s fine. It’s healing,” Peter assures her. “Tony took care of it. I’ve been up at his place the last few weeks.”

“He did? You were?” May says, sounding both startled and pleased by this news. She squeezes his shoulders and gives him an understanding smile. “Oh, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that.”

She touches a hand to his cheek. “Are you hungry? I got some leftover spaghetti in the fridge.” She purses her lips, looking him up and down again. “You look skinny. Was that dumbass Tony forgetting to feed you?”

Peter gives her a crooked smile. “No, May. It’s just the pain meds. They always wreck my appetite.”

“Well, let me warm something up for you,” May insists, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Go put your stuff away and then sit down and relax.”

“Thanks, May.”

Peter dumps his duffel bag in his old bedroom, and then heads back to the living room. He stands there in the middle of the room while May rummages around in the kitchen, flexing his stiff, aching fingers inside the cast. His heart is beating fast and hard all of a sudden, leaving him feeling slightly lightheaded.

He takes a few deep, steadying breaths, flexing his fingers, his eyes wandering around the room. He spots a faded brown patch on the carpet under one of the living room’s windows, the stain left there from years ago when he’d come through the window one night after patrolling with a bloody nose. 

He walks over to it, standing in front of the window and gently rubbing at the stain with his toes, remembering how he’d tried to clean it up before May woke up, remembering how kind and forgiving she’d been when he’d failed, her hands cool and gentle on his face as she’d held an icepack to his broken nose.

He looks out the window, wondering how many times he’d crawled in through it late at night, how many nights May had pretended to sleep while she lay awake in bed, waiting for him to come home.

He happens to glance at the latch on the window’s sash as he starts to turn away, and he sees that the window is still unlocked all these many months later despite his long absence—sees that May’s still been waiting for him to come home, even after all this time.

The realization crashes into him like a wave and tumbles him over, crushing. He presses a hand to his eyes, his breath coming in shaky, heavy gulps, and then he turns and walks towards the kitchen.

May stands at the counter by the fridge, her back turned towards him as she spoons spaghetti from a tupperware container into a bowl.

“You want something to drink with this?” she asks over her shoulder. “A soda? A beer?”

“May...” Peter says raggedly from behind her.

May turns around, still holding the bowl, her eyebrows raising in alarm as she looks him over. “Peter? Honey—what happened?”

“You left the window unlocked,” Peter says, his voice breaking, tears streaming down his face.

May sets the bowl aside on the counter, her eyes shining, full of love and understanding.

“Come here, baby,” she says, opening her arms to him. “Come here.”

Peter goes to her, sinking into her embrace. May pulls him close, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and running her hand through his hair, over and over, like she used to do when he was a child and needed comforting.

“I love you. I love you. I love you,” she murmurs to him. “I’m always here for you.”

***

It’s another few weeks before Peter’s hand heals enough for the cast to come off, and as soon as it does he’s out swinging through the city as Spider-Man again. He races his own reflection in the gleaming windows of skyscrapers, relishing that familiar exhilarating moment of free fall, the tug and pull of the swing, as close as he can get to actually flying.

He takes a break after a few hours, sitting on the roof of a high rise with his legs dangling off the side, stretching out the sore muscles in his healing arm and watching the tiny pedestrians scurry around on the sidewalks far below.

“Hey! Spidey!” a voice calls from overhead.

Peter tilts his head back, shading his eyes with a hand as he watches Johnny zip smoothly down to land on the roof beside him.

“Hey! Where ya been, man?” Johnny asks, flashing a wide smile. “I haven’t seen you around in weeks.”

“I went home,” Peter says simply. “Saw my folks.”

“Yeah? That’s good. I didn’t even know if you had any folks, so. That’s cool,” Johnny says as he plops down to sit next to Peter. He holds up a bare popsicle stick, his smile turning sheepish. “This dude was selling Spider-Man popsicles outside the Baxter Building. I tried to bring you one, but, uh...it melted while I was flying around.”

Peter smiles behind his mask, snorting in amusement. “You are the dumbest person I’ve ever met. What did you think was gonna happen?”

Johnny shrugs. “I wasn’t thinking, obviously. I just thought you’d find it cool. I mean, I don’t have a Torch popsicle.”

“Yet,” Peter says generously.

Johnny grins at him again. “Yet.”

Peter takes the popsicle stick from him, rolling up his mask so he can touch the pink-stained wood to his tongue. He smacks his lips, grimacing.

“Raspberry. Gross. My least favorite flavor,” he says ruefully, putting the stick down. “Spider-Man luck strikes again.”

Johnny grins wider. “It looked like shit, too, honestly.” He playfully pinches Peter’s nose through the mask. “A good likeness, at least, you fugly little potato head.”

Peter snorts again, slapping Johnny’s hand away. He goes quiet a moment, looking down at the busy city below.

“Hey, I’m sorry I was such a dick to you,” he says finally, looking over at Johnny.

Johnny shrugs, still grinning, reclining back on his elbows. “Didn’t really bother me. Ben gives me worse. Susie _really_ gives me worse. So I’m used to it.”

“Still. I’m sorry,” Peter says, looking down again and twisting his hands in his lap.

“I, uh...I had this friend,” he continues quietly. “Gwen. Gwen Stacy.”

Johnny sits back up, resting his hands on his knees. “That girl who killed herself? The one who jumped off the bridge?”

“She didn’t kill herself. Some people found out my identity, and they took her to get at me,” Peter says, speaking past the ache in his chest. “They threw her off the bridge. I caught her with a web before she hit the water, but...I didn’t do it right, and...she died. Broke her neck. It was an accident, but...”

He stops for a moment, the city below going blurry as he blinks back tears.

“She was my best friend,” he manages to say, his voice thick with grief. “We did _everything_ together. She knew me better than anyone. We didn’t have any secrets. She was like...my soulmate, you know? I loved her, and...I killed her. And the thought of getting close like that with somebody again...the thought that...I could hurt somebody I loved again...it really scared me. It still scares me.”

Johnny’s quiet for a moment, and then he leans over and wraps Peter in a tight hug, his arms strong and solid and warm.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he murmurs, squeezing Peter tighter. “I’m sorry about Gwen. She sounds like she was really something special. You can tell me more about her, if you want.”

“Yeah. I’d like that,” Peter says, hugging him back.

Johnny squeezes him one last time before letting him go, smiling as he gets back up to his feet. “Hey—I’m supposed to be going to Latveria to fight robots or something right now, and my sister will chew my ass out if I’m late, but...maybe you could swing by our place for dinner with the fam tomorrow? I know you’re really busy, but Susie’s always pestering me about you, and I told her you’d probably say no, but—”

“Sure,” Peter agrees.

Johnny blinks at him in surprise, momentarily speechless for once, before his face lights up with another brilliant smile. “Okay. Okay—cool. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Just swing by whenever you want, we’ll be there. So. Awesome. Well—bye for now, Spidey.”

“Peter.”

Johnny falters at the edge of the building, almost losing his balance. “What’s that?”

“My name,” Peter tells him. “My real name. It’s Peter.”

Johnny blinks at him again, even more stunned than he was before, and then he smiles at Peter once more, softer and warmer this time, reaching out to shake Peter’s hand. “It’s really nice to finally meet you, Peter.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, standing up and grabbing Johnny’s hand. “Sorry it took so long.”

“No worries, my dude. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist my charms forever,” Johnny says with a wink as he takes a step to the edge of the roof and ignites in flames. He steps backwards off the edge, hovering there.

“See ya tomorrow, Pete,” he says with a sloppy salute.

“Yeah, see you,” Peter replies, shading his eyes again as he watches Johnny stream away like a rocket, before leaping off the roof himself. He catches himself on a web, twisting into a steep arc, swinging away towards home.

**Author's Note:**

> Story and chapter titles from [Putting the Dog to Sleep](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg8Ckamh8Gw) by The Antlers.
> 
> Thanks for reading! You can also find me on tumblr as [groo-ock](https://groo-ock.tumblr.com/)


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